Hegemonic Multiculturalism: English Immersion, Ideology, and Subtractive Schooling

Abstract

This article not absents a case study of an elementary institute situated within a prestigious place of education district that has undergone rapid demographic change in novel years. The authors explore by what means the school has accommodated growing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse learners while at the same time struggling to maintain district standards. In order to further our understanding of the proces of subtractive schooling, a critique of an English-immersion program accounted "successful" is provided by examining the discourses that define what succes means in an inclusive setting. The authors theorize the universal of hegemonic multiculturalism to explain the transitional nature of a gymnasium culture defined by dissonance between the ideology of multiculturalism and the school's pervasive assimilation agenda. Within this transitional space, succes is defined quite narrowly in limits of immigrant students' level of assimilation, smoothness in English, and performance upon standardized tests. Although the academy community claims to value bilingualism and scholar diversity, instructional practices inadvertently devalue these qualities in the name of equality for all.

Introduction

Literature upon the experiences of minority pupils in affluent suburban schools is limited. greatest in quantity researchers interested in the influence of minority status upon the educational process have focused their attention upon schools heavily populated by scholars of color or on seminarys that have undergone desegregation efforts (Lewis, 2001 ; Mickelson, 2003) As a point of departure from these studies, we at hand a case study of an elementary institute situated within a prestigious place of education district that primarily serves White, upper- and middle-class youth. However, a cluster of elementary place of educations in the district have undergone rapid demographic change to be paid to the influx of immigrant communities into service areas located at the cusp of the metropolis, neighborhoods one time considered suburban. Grounded in critical ethnography, we place out to understand how single of these changing elementary gymnasiums which we have named Parkland Elementary, has accommodated growing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse pupils while at the same time endeavored to maintain normativity as previously accustomed.

In general, we were interested in the character that power dynamics play in an all-inclusive, English-immersion academy setting. Specifically, we wanted to understand in what way a school whose student population has become increasingly more multicultural and multilingual in the past 5 years can analyze the contradictory missions of affirming diversity and promoting assimilation. Is it possible for a seminary to uphold the transformative principles of multicultural education within an English-immersion setting earthed in assimilative pedagogical practices?

Following Michelle Jay's (2003) assertion that "multicultural education acquires appropriated as a 'hegemonic device' that sures a continued position of power and leadership for the dominant clumps in society" (p. 3), we theorize the universal of hegemonic multiculturalism and use this framework to problematize what succes means for culturally and linguistically diverse pupils in an English-immersion school considered "successful" Our intent is to use the tools of ethnography to document the ways in which hegemonic multiculturalism operates [i]or[/i] part of to the other consensus and how English language learners (ELLs) are disciplined to emulate and internalize this ideology. We also illustrate by what mode the knowledge and expertise emergencyed to teach ELLs is many times devalued under these conditions or outsourced to language specialists whose status is subordinate to that of general education teachers, despite being properly qualified.

In his novel book, Racism Without Racists, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003a) outlines his theoretical framework for understanding the nuanced character of racial ideologies in post-civil rights America. Bonilla-Silva elucidates in what manner the concept of color blindness has co-opt the transformative endeavors of the civil rights motion by shifting the dialogue upon social inequality away from race to agriculture and by using the rhetoric of post-civil rights leaders in a "hegemonic way" in service of the dominant agriculture (p. 10). In a short article published in the Journal of Political Ideologies, Bonilla-Silva (2003b) briefly defines this novel racial order:

Accordingly, post-civil rights racial ideology mirrors the character of the novel racial order. Instead of relying upon an in-your-face set of beliefs ("Minorities are behind us because they are stupid or biologically inferior."), the fresh ideology is as indirect, slippery, and apparently non-racial as the fresh ways of maintaining racial privilege. I label this novel ideology colourblind racism and argue that it is centrally anchored in the abstract extension of egalitarian values to racial minorities and the notion that racial minorities are culturally rather than biologically deficient. (p 68)