Overcoming Language Barriers to Education in a Multilingual World.

Abstract

ABSTeACT The 75th anniversary of a city honored among other things for its role in the revival of the Hebrew larguage is an appropriate occasion to remind ourselves of the complex effects of language policy on education°. In choosing tooestablish Hebrew as its standard language, Israel was working to proclaim both-present and historical* unity. The rapidity with which the language spread, the comparative ease with which large numbers of migrants came to use it, the skill with which it was developed for new domains of modern life, . should not be permitted, however, to obscure one of the costs. In Israel, as in much of the modern world, children come to school speaking a language or a dialect different from the one valued by the school system. Failure to recognize this means that many children, whether their home language is different from the standard or a stigmatised variant of it, face a barrier to their education. Educational linguistics, a field that is well developed in Israel, provides a means of studying this problem and of working to provide equal educational opportunity for all students in a mupilingual society. (Author/RDN)

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