73.010 - Culture, Language, and the Politics of Forgetting: Beyond Restrictive Language Policies in Education

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This public address will critically examine the inextricable relations of power that exist between culture, class, and language within the context of classroom practices. As such, historical and economic concerns with the hidden curriculum of racialized language pedagogies in education are engaged here, particularly with respect to questions of cultural invasion, linguistic genocide, and the colonizing impact that restrictive language practices have on bicultural students from poor working class communities---who are now the majority in many large U.S. public school districts. Unveiling the epistemicides that accompany practices of language in education and the need to embrace a decolonizing and emancipatory political project of schooling and society is central to this discussion. At the heart of this presentation sit critical democratic principles of literacy as articulated by Paulo Freire, Donaldo Macedo, Tove Skatnubb-Kangas, Lilia Bartolome, and other critical scholars whose work has directly focused on such concerns.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Ruben Donato, University of Colorado - Boulder

Participant

• Antonia Darder, Loyola Marymount University

Discussant

• João Menelau Paraskeva, University of Massachusetts