Heritage Language Education and Antiracist Activism in 1970s Ontario

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Languaging Practices in Multilingual Homes and Communities

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a genealogy of the Heritage Languages Program (HLP), an educational policy in Ontario from the late 1970s that continues to structure how Ontario’s youth learn heritage languages today. The paper focuses on the relationship between the HLP and anti-racist activism in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Toronto. Specifically, it examines the process by which Black parents and educators leveraged the HLP to support their own demands for Black Cultural Heritage programs; the resistance they encountered from the Ministry of Education; and the forms of solidarity they built with immigrant and Franco-Ontarian parents and activists.

Authors

• Jeff Bale, University of Toronto - OISE

• Mayo Kawaguchi, University of Toronto