“Ideologically motivated professors oblivious to real world data”: State sponsored repression against bilingual education in Arizona

• In Event: Ideological Clarity as Protest in Teacher Preparation Programs: The Social Imperative to Radicalize Teachers in the United States, Japan, and Chile

Proposal

The theoretical and practical implications of the power of protest have a special resonance for educators in the Southwestern state of Arizona, whose political activism in 2018 culminated in a six-day, statewide, strike for higher wages and better working conditions. The work stoppage forced the legislature to grant teachers a 20 percent pay increase and rescind proposed tax cuts. Despite these successes, right-wing state legislators and education officials have continued efforts to restrict public school curricula as well as the pedagogical agency of public school teachers. These efforts include bans on critical race theory, social emotional learning, young adult books and content subject textbooks that interrogate issues of race, gender, and ethnicity, and directives regulating the way that teachers discuss these issues with students. Finally, there are instructional mandates that dictate which language teachers may use with English learners in public schools.
The Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction publicly criticized teachers and teacher educators for supporting bilingual education. He prohibited school districts from enrolling English language learners in dual language programs because of his belief that these students should be taught in English only in segregated language blocks that prioritize grammar and vocabulary building over subject areas like math, social studies, science, and language arts. He has labeled professors of bilingual and English as a second language in colleges of education as “ideologically motivated” and “oblivious to real world data” (Arizona Department of Education, 2023).
This presentation discusses the role of ideological clarity in an undergraduate introduction to linguistics and language policy class. In small group and whole class dialogue, applied activities, arts-based approaches, and unscripted theatrical improvisations pre-service teachers considered what ideological clarity and advocacy meant for educational practice in public schools. Discussions about education as political and contested terrain provided a deeper understanding among students in these classes of the non-neutrality of education and the importance of incorporating student and family funds of knowledge into curriculum and pedagogy. I argue that ideological clarity is particularly important given that most pre-service teachers in Arizona and elsewhere in the U.S. are White, middle-class, monolingual women who will be teaching a demographic population of students whose linguistic and cultural experiences are very different.

Author

• Mary Carol Combs, University of Arizona