Lourdes Diaz Soto

The book is the result of nine years' worth of data collecting, mostly in the form of interviews with twelve Latino/a members of the Steel Town community. Soto's participants were all "nominated by members of the bilingual community for their leadership skills and were described as 'well respected in the community'" (Soto, 1997, p. 25); they were interviewed regarding their personal educational experiences as well as those of their children, their attitudes toward bilingual education, and their in-home language practices. All of them were highly educated, upwardly-mobile, and active in th

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tic issue but a racial one as well: Contemporary examples of how bilingual families are being impacted by an oppressive and blatantly racist agenda include the proliferation of the English-only movement . . . and legislative budgetary mandates punishing the most vulnerable in our nation (Soto, 1997, p. 83). Soto does not accuse Steel Town's school superintendent outright of racism, but despite the overwhelming number of studies which indicate that bilingualism has "positive effects . . . on a variety of cognitive performance measures, metalinguistic attributes, divergent thinking, and creativity" (Soto, 1997, p. 4), the superintendent decided to eliminate the Spanish/English bilingual program because "he did not agree with the bilingual education curriculum of his own district" (Soto, 1997, p. 59). She does, however, make it clear that the superintendent's decision was made against the advice of a number of faculty members as well as the wishes of many parents and children who were directly affected by the loss of the bilingual program (Soto, 1997, p. 57). One of the major points which emerges from Soto's book, therefore, is that a thorough case study of bilingualism and bilingual education absolutely must take into ac
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1513
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)