language learning in English primary schools (DfE, 2012), the question of the use and promotion of foreign languages within English society more generally, especially when they are associated with the languages of the immigrant population, is a political and controversial one.
A general discomfort among the dominant English-speaking population with the use of foreign languages in daily life manifests itself in various ways. At a policy level, this occurs through ministerial pronouncements on the issue of language use. Eric Pickles, former Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government, has portrayed the fact that English is not spoken as the main
language in 5% of UK homes as an ‘incomprehensible situation’. He has implied that immigrant parents are not making enough effort to encourage their children to speak English, comparing them to parents in Beijing and Mumbai who are
‘striving’ for their children to learn English (Sky News, 2013).
The pronouncement forms part of a continuing discourse on the problematic nature of immigrants speaking languages other than English. During the period of the Labour government (1997-2010), David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, also urged immigrants to speak English at home, in order to prevent the
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‘schizophrenia’ which ‘bedevils’ relationships between generations in immigrant families (Hughes, 2014).
More recently, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party expressed discomfort at hearing foreign languages being spoken around him during a train journey (Sparrow, 2014). The party, which supports strict limitations on
immigration, enjoyed 27.5% of votes cast in Britain during the 2014 European parliamentary elections (BBC News, 2014).
In daily life too, bilinguals can experience negative reactions to their use of a foreign language in public and work places. In one instance, the manager of a Manchester branch of McDonalds, unhappy with members of his staff speaking with each other in community languages, put up a sign requiring all staff to use English at all times (BBC, 2004). The case was referred to the Commission for Racial Equality, with claims of discrimination against those who did not have English as their native language.
The presence and use of community languages in general is also often linked to the perceived problem of immigration, as the following article from the Daily Mail website illustrates:
Two startling sets of figures this week expose the phenomenal impact of mass, unrestricted immigration on the social fabric of Britain … The first, from the Department for Education, showed more than a million
schoolchildren – up by 250,000 in the past five years alone – speak a language other than English as their mother tongue, while nearly three in 10 primary school pupils belong to ethnic minorities. (Daily Mail, 2013)
While such language of alarm is not supported by empirical evidence about the impact of bilingual children on the learning of their classmates, which has been
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shown to be neutral, and in some cases even positive (Geay et al., 2012), it nevertheless reflects an ongoing concern that large numbers of immigrant children might have a detrimental effect on the education of indigenous children. Such concerns are historical and continue a discourse which stretches back to the 1960’s in England. Swann (1985), for example, cited disquiet in a Commonwealth and Immigrants Advisory Council report in the following terms:
The presence of a high proportion of immigrant children in one class slows down the general routine of working and hampers the progress of the whole class, especially where the immigrants do not speak or write English fluently. (CIAC, 1964: cited in Swann, 1985: 193)
Policies promoting bilingualism in schools (beyond providing a mainstream MFL curriculum and EAL support) similarly provoke controversy. The announcement of the opening of the Bilingual Primary School in Brighton received a mixed reception on the comments pages of the Argus (the local newspaper) website. The founding of the school was called ‘pretentious nonsense’ and the founders
accused of treating children like guinea pigs on the one hand, while the school was lauded as ‘a wonderful initiative’ on the other (The Argus, 2012).
If such reaction to bilingual education is typical of what might be expected of future initiatives, the English experience will reflect those of other countries where bilingual education has also proved controversial, including Germany (Meier, 2010), USA (Cummins, 2000), and Spain (Laitin and Reich, 2003). In order for schools to provide an environment in which bilingual children’s ‘first language is valued in school and that it is not seen as second rate to English’ (Conteh and Brock, 2006), practitioners would need to adopt discourse and practice which reflects greater ease with the foreign language use of their
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bilingual pupils than that of society more widely. This would imply that teachers need to detach themselves from ‘the larger macro ideological order, which is increasingly hostile to multilingualism and multiculturalism through its
enforcement of monolingualism in society’ (Creese and Blackledge, 2010: 104). The analysis of practitioner talk in chapter 6 provides an indication of the extent to which they do this, and the discussion is taken up again in section 7.1.
In the next section, I review messages with regard to home language learning and use conveyed in policy in England. Two areas of particular interest are MFL policy, which has the potential to promote home language learning in mainstream schools through community / asset language programmes, and EAL policy, which, on the occasions it is formulated in line with research evidence about bilingualism, has highlighted the benefits of home language learning.