Public Education for Democracy: Teaching Immigrant and Bilingual Children as Equals

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Division B Roundtable Session

Abstract

This theoretical essay offers a genealogical analysis (Foucault, 1975) that problematizes the idea of “public” with respect to schooling immigrant and bilingual students. “Public” has been reconfigured in ways that privilege hegemonic whiteness, resulting in policies and practices such as standardized testing, for example, that primarily evaluate, sort, and penalize (Foucault, 1975) schools serving these students. We contend that testing’s pernicious impacts stem from a raciolinguistic project of American identity (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Educators, adapting to the tests (Freire, 1974), cement linguistic and racial hierarchies. Referencing classrooms from our teaching and empirical work, we argue for teacher education that emphasizes the transformative potential of education and the central role of teachers as facilitators of students’ and their own liberation.

Authors

• Luis Ernesto Poza, San José State University

• Sheila M. Shannon, University of Colorado - Denver