The other day when I was doing research for my Bilingualism assignment, I came across this one journal article about the education system for bilingual children in United States. Just a quick summary, the article pointed out that there was not enough resources provided for Creole-speaking Haitian children in the country, compare to the amount of bilingual education provided for Chinese and Spanish-speaking children.
The reason was simple. Discrimination towards the Haitian ethnic and also Creole-language itself was the major drive that cause this scene to happen. Since they both were originated from a third world country, the education authorities felt that it was not worth the money spent on them. It's quite contrastive to the case of Chinese and Spanish children as both languages came from more developed countries. You know, providing enough educational resources such as bilingual Creole-English books etc., it could take an enormous amount of moolahs.
Why does America, as they claim them being the 'hero of democracy', can't provide a fair education for all ethnics in the country itself?
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It really makes me ponder when reading the article.
As a future teacher, would I be able to provide fair education to my students later? Would I not have the feeling of favouritism towards certain students? I'm a normal being with feelings but I hope I won't get too carried away in teaching.
Teaching isn't merely about mastery of all the theories learnt in university as it is also about adjusting it to fit the real situation in the classroom.
Teaching ain't easy. We might not need to deal with numbers or scientific stuffs like other job areas but we are dealing with the most complicated creation -- Human.
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p/s: To those who are interested in reading the article can email me so I can give you the pdf copy of it.
As referred from
'Haitian Creole Language and Bilingual Education in the United States: Problem,
Right, or Resource?' by
Flore Zephir in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (1997).
