Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T19:50:04.051Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ana Roca & M. Cecilia Colombi (eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2006

Norma Gonzalez
Affiliation:
Education, Culture and Society, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9256, norma.gonzalez@ed.utah.edu

Extract

Ana Roca & M. Cecilia Colombi (eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 2003. 320 pp. $29.95.

The teaching of Spanish to native speakers has been packaged under diverse names, emerging most recently as “Spanish as a Heritage Language.” Whether it is couched as developmental bilingual education, maintenance bilingual education, Spanish for native speakers, or heritage language development, advocates for programs of academic excellence in two languages have been dealt a stunning blow by recent federal school reform measures. The No Child Left Behind Act, passed in 2001, eliminates, for all intents and purposes, the Bilingual Education Act (Title VII), as programs for English language learners have been subsumed under Title III of NCLB. All reference to bilingual education has been expunged from federal parlance, replaced in both form and substance by English language acquisition programs. The former Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (OBEMLA), the repository of research on minoritized languages in the United States, has been transformed into the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited-English-Proficient Students. Needless to say, support for native-language instruction is not found in Title III, as English language acquisition takes center stage. Add to this scenario the referenda passed in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts dismantling bilingual education, as well as the anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the country, and the prospect of fostering Spanish as a heritage language seems dismal indeed.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M.C. Colombi & F.X. Alarcón (eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Valdés, G. (2000). Introduction. In Spanish for Native Speakers, Volume 1. AATSP Professional Development Series Handbook for teachers K–16. New York: Harcourt College.