Conclusion: Challenging Linguistic Inequities in Multilingual School Communities
My mother does not know the discomfort of trying to speak English all day, everyday. She is in Hong Kong where she can speak Cantonese. Some days my mouth, my cheeks, my lips, my throat hurt. When my mother tells me, "I want you to speak English" she thinks only of the doors that might open. Not the doors that close. An English-only policy will close doors for those of us who speak other languages. Unable to say what we would like to say in English, some of us will remain silent. An English-only policy also closes doors for those of us who want to practice speaking other languages with students who already know them well.
[From Hong Kong, Canada]
In the last scene of my play, Hong Kong, Canada (Appendix A), English teacher, Ms. Diamond, holds a school hearing so that she can better understand the variety of student views on multilingualism at her school. A petition for an English-only policy has been signed by a small group of students at the school and Ms. Diamond is trying to find out what is behind their desire to eliminate the use of languages other than English. At the same time, Ms. Diamond wants to find out why other students feel that multilingual practices serve their best interests. In the quotation that opens this conclusion, the character of Wendy uses the metaphor of opening and closing doors to articulate her thinking on the issue. In her mind, an English-only policy closes doors for students who speak languages other than English.
Like the characters in Hong Kong, Canada, the students and teachers at Northside grappled with the politics of language use at their school. As mentioned in the Introduction, the staff at Northside were expected to follow the guidelines set forth in the school board's 1995 Language for Learning Policy, which accepted student multilingualism at school. Although all the teachers we spoke to supported and shared the Language for Learning Policy's goal of setting ESOL students up for academic success, not all of them shared the policy's assumption that the best way to do this was by accepting institutional student multilingualism. In this short conclusion, I summarize the different ways the Learning for Policy was received at Northside by examining the ways particular assumptions underlying the policy were both embraced and contested by teachers and students. I also return to an important purpose of this critical teacher education text, and dis cuss the question of whether or not a language policy that promotes student multilingualism is able to effectively challenge educational linguistic inequities facing ESOL students in schools like Northside.
