Whole Language Based 4th Grade Class

Emerging Whole-Language based Fourth Grade Classroom

1. Our "New World Order" in Crisis: Melting pot-ism or Cultural plural-ism?

B.N. Kumisawa (1988) highlights the current crisis in the educational system of our nation by quoting the school dropout rates:

. American Indians/Alaskan Natives.......42.0%

. Hispanics..............................39.9%

. Blacks.................................24.7%

. Whites.................................14.3%

. Asians/Pacific Islanders............... 9.6%

Garza (1991) notes that in major cities of the United States, Hispanics "have significant drop-out rates--New York, 80 percent; Chicago, 70 percent; Miami, 32 percent... There is no paucity of data at this point to indicate that ethnic minorities have been virtually devastated by the educational system in this country. Thus, immigrant minorities as well as U.S. ethnic minorities are failing to acquire sufficient education to become productive individuals in our society... Current increases in non-White populations have changed the classrooms of the 1980s. Immigration from non-Western European countries is burgeoning. In the Los Angeles public schools, the proportion of immigrant students has more than doubled, to 16 percent since 1978. This figure is expected to grow 5 to 7 percent a year over the next decade. In the 1988-89 school year, for the first time, projections indicated more minority

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ons. "The usual stance adopted by such opponents was that such an orientation is politically dangerous, culturally romantic, and fiscally frivolous" (Fishman, 1979). Proponent of the melting pot theory, Professor Nicholas Sanchez (1987), supports "bilingual programs that are committed to helping children move quickly into English-language classroom." Is this a pluralistic or particularistic stance? Or is fostering a national language while respecting a diversity of vernaculars chauvinism, autocracy, racism? Or is it possibly enlightened pluralistic patriotism? Experience in the last two decades has shown that "truly effective bilingual education can only be possible in a national context in which bilingualism and cultural diversity are themselves viable and dynamic ways of life and in which non-English native tongues can flourish and serve the people in all activities" (Hernßndez-Chßvez, 1979). Should perhaps bilingual education apply to all our children... as it does in much of the rest of the world? "Language," says Catherine Walsh (1987), "is a sociocultural phenomenon... Individuals can only be understood in terms of their specific sociohistorical setting... Children come to school with this speaking consciousness al
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 9640
Approximate Pages = 39 (250 words per page)

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