The Raciolinguistics of Hebrew in a Public School Dual-Language Program

• In Event: Bilingualism for All? Raciolinguistic Perspectives on Dual-Language Education

Abstract

This presentation examines the unique case of a Hebrew-English dual language bilingual education program in a New York City public middle school that served Jewish children and Black non-Jewish children. As the study of Hebrew language has traditionally been restricted to private Jewish schooling, this case study advances raciolinguistic scholarship by bringing religious language ideologies into the dynamics of dual language initiatives in public schooling. Specifically, by focusing on the creation and implementation of this program, this presentation analyzes how Jewish and non-Jewish families construed each other through the practice of learning Hebrew, as well as how raciolinguistic ideologies intersected with the linguistic and cultural meanings of Hebrew that each group held.

Findings showed that each of these two groups saw the opportunity to study Hebrew through a different prism; Jewish families were attracted to the program because it carved out an identity-affirming Jewish space for their children in public schooling that had been previously unavailable. Black non-Jewish families, on the other hand, were drawn to the program because it offered access to educational and economic opportunities that families felt were lacking from other public-school options. These overlapping motivations underscore the ways in which dual language bilingual education provided opportunities for these two minoritized communities that have traditionally not taken part in bilingual education programs. However, the findings also showed that Hebrew language ideologies - namely that Hebrew is the language of Judaism and Israel - limited the potential for non-Jewish Black students to claim Hebrew as their own and restricted classroom discussions about racial or religious difference in general. With its structural design focused on recruiting Jewish students and instructional approach centered myopically on language, this Hebrew-English program did not expand beyond this essentialist Hebrew language ideology and failed to attend to broader multicultural possibilities.

Our findings reflect the limits of dual language bilingual education to offer socially transformative educational spaces and shows how the goals of expanding dual language options can have unintended consequences, including perpetuating racial discrimination, linguistic marginalization, and class and ethnic hierarchies. The findings are drawn from qualitative data collected in the 2016-2017 academic year, including year-long ethnographic observations of classroom lessons and professional development workshops and meetings, semi-formal interviews with teachers, school administrators, students, and parents, sociolinguistic surveys of students and their families, and classroom documents and artifacts.

Authors

• Sharon Avni, Borough of Manhattan Community College - CUNY

• Kate Menken, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York