EDUCATION QUARTERLY, December 2011, Vol.

69 (1), 4-14
U.P. College of Education

The Heart, Mind, and Soul

Of a Multilingual Society

Gloria1Guzman Johannessen
Texas State University-San Marcos

Abstract

This paper was presented in a plenary session of the 2010 International

Conference on Teacher Education (ICTED).

It argues that language is central to an individuals and communitys

identity, dignity, and creativity and presents a vision of education in which
nurturing and maintenance of mother languages is front and center. This
vision involves the heart (students), mind (educators), and soul
(community) of a multilingual societyelements that are fundamental in
the preservation of its linguistic and cultural identities. This means
educating all students to live in a multilingual and multiethnic global city,
that colleges and universities bring the mother languages present in their
communities to their classrooms, and that community members are fully
engaged in the creation of a peaceful and vibrant community that
recognizes and celebrates its linguistic and cultural richness.

Key words: language, multilingual education

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

W e as educators, at all levels of the educational field, are in the most

amazing profession in the world.

As educators, we have the opportunity to influence culture, science, creative

thought, future inventions, unlimited creativity, and most of all, we can guide
students to envision and aspire to live in a more just and peaceful world.

If we, individually and collectively do our job well, we can raise our students
consciousness about the preservation of the environment; inequitable
conditions in society; and the preservation of world languages and cultures.
This is why we must strive to develop our students humanitarian capacities
needed to change the world (Oaks and Lipton, 2007), and we can do so by
listening and paying attention to multiple narratives, from multiple voices,
multiple languages, and from multiple socioeconomic perspectives. We have
the conditions to do so, and there is no other profession that can make this
claim.

We have daily opportunities to influence society, yet often seem to be in

disbelief of our potential as educators. This disbelief becomes evident when we
choose to oblige to mandates requiring us to engage students in activities
focused on extracting literal facts from mandated textbooks, and later test them
to confirm their abilities in regurgitating trivia. What a waste of our potential!
Instead, we should be centering our efforts on the development of critical
thinking, leading to the development of students abilities to engage in
activities geared to enlarge their world knowledge and the wisdom needed to
envision that they are members of, not only their immediate society, but also of
a world community.

Guiding students to live and learn in the 21st century and in a global society
necessitates the courage to build their confidence to critically examine
information we give them or is presented in textbooks; to construct their own
knowledge; to participate in academic conversations on educational and social
themes; to learn second and third languages; and to explore local, regional,
national, and global ethical issues. What's more, education in multilingual
societies demands our commitment to explore language and cultural diversity
at local, regional, and global levels. We need to make students, colleagues, and
the community aware and accountable for the future of mother and heritage
languages, but what is even more crucial, in multilingual societies, is to engage

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

students in the examination of the status of their own languages. This alone
would enhance our educational and humanitarian capacities to a just, peaceful,
equitable, and responsive society.

We are in the only profession in the world capable to change the world, and
again, there is no other profession that can make this claim (Oakes and Lipton,
2007).

As I open our conversation, please suspend reality for a moment to reflect on a

memorable teaching moment. I am sure we all have had many of those
moments!

What comes to mind at this moment is the disparity with which the media
reports on issues concerning the ecological and linguistic balance in our world.
While we frequently hear in newscasts and documentaries about the concern of
endangered animal species, it is seldom to find in the news, documentaries, or
films about the concern for languages that are facing extinction.

Just as only a few days ago, I saw an announcement in the television that said:
You contribution of $5.00 a day can save the polar bears. I reflected on this
ad, and I questioned, do we need to be concerned about endangered animal
species? My response was, of course we do! Our concern lies in the fact that
the extinction of one species leads to the possibility of a world without
hundreds or thousands of animal species. When this curtain of possibility
becomes wide open, we may see nothing but a desolate scene in ecological
imbalance, and this image must bring us to the realization that we need to be
respectful of and care for the environment. However, what it is even more
compelling is to imagine that this curtain may open to reveal a bleak scene in
which over 3,500 languages have disappeared, as it will be the case in a few
decades, if we do nothing about it. (Scebold, 2003; Nettle and Romaine, 2000).

It is evident that the world is moving toward linguistic hegemony in which only
a few languages will survive. This homogenization is taking place as a result of
ethnocide, linguicide, or linguistic euthanasia (Headland, 2003; Skutnabb-
Kangas, 2000).

Ethnocide and linguicide are happening in all parts of the world as a

consequence of powerful nations ongoing attempts to mainstream ethnic and
linguistic minorities at the cost of their mother languages and cultures, while

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

linguistic euthanasia is language death due to a societys decision to choose a

foreign language as an official language or language of wider communication,
at the cost of their own (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000).

The excuse that some nations have for linguistic genocide is that one language
and one culture provides them with the cultural coherence that enables the
nation to be united, uphold political and economic power, and be able to clamor
patriotism. However, what is missing in this message is that unification of
language and culture means submission of minority languages and cultures in
order to promote a unified political and economic agenda in favor of
mainstream society.

Another school of thought is that languages are dying because they go through
the same evolutionary process as living organisms; therefore, we need to accept
the fate of the survival of the fittest. We can also view the process of
language dominationnot as an evolutionary linguistic process but as a
process of social, economic, and political domination. Whichever is our view,
we need to be conscious of the consequences of language death (Crystal, 2000).

So what does the prospect of allowing the extinction of languages mean to the
world, and more specifically to us living and practicing our profession in
multilingual societies? Is there anything we can do, or shall we remain deaf to
the silence that will come with their extinction?

What is the relevance of the extinction of languages to the Philippines? The

Philippines archipelago with its 7,107 islands, is categorized as one of the
richest biodiversity and linguistically diverse regions in the world (Headland,
2003) with its 181 distinct indigenous languages and 10 immigrant languages,
as reported in Ethnologue. (http://www.ethnologue.com/). As educators living
and practicing our profession in multilingual societies, we need to be watchful
of the languages we are in contact with and know the signs that point in the
direction of their extinction. At the same time, we need to have a vision of
education in which the nurturing and maintenance of mother languages is front
and center.

I recognize you are vigilant about the preservation of the linguistic richness of
the Philippines, as shown in your attempt to advance education in the mother
languages, and I applaud you. As a matter of fact, a picture of a sign that said:

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

Reclaiming the right to learn in ones own language taken in Manila this year
sparked my imagination and inspired me for our conversation today.

I entitled my presentation: The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

because these three elements are fundamental in a thriving multilingual society
aspiring to the preservation of its linguistic and cultural identities. The heart of
education is represented by our students, the mind by the wisdom of educators
fully committed to service them, and the soul by a community that understands
and supports its multilingual and ethno-culturally diverse environment.

I will frame my conversation with a narrative about my experiences in

Nicaragua and California, because they illustrate the challenges of multilingual
societies. I also wish to bring forth the understanding that language is central to
individuals and communitys identity, dignity, and creativity, and finally, I
will provide you with a vision of multilingual education as an emancipation of
the intellectual capacity needed to prepare students to succeed in a global
society.

While in my Nicaragua experience, linguistic richness was nurtured by national

and international political and educational entities, in California I was witness
of challenges and disputes about the worth and richness of linguistic varieties,
and language policies aimed at linguistic apartheid and the eradication of
mother or heritage languages.

My Nicaraguan story begins with the first forums on bilingual education held
in 1997 (during the passing of hurricane Mitch) and ending in 2005 when
funding for the program I was working for came to an end. During this span of
time I was key consultant for bilingual education in the Nicaraguan
Autonomous Regions of the North (RAAN) and South Atlantic (RAAS). In this
capacity, I visited some of the most remote villages in what is called the
Miskito Coast, travelling by small airplane, panga, and SUB under extreme
climatic conditions.

My love affair for these regions and their peoples began when I first talked
with students who were in a normal school of teaching. I was overwhelmed by
their candor, commitment to their studies, and their willingness to participate in
activities in which the governor of the RAAN, Sub-Minister of Education,
international donors, politicians, educational administrators, their teachers, and
community leaders were going to discuss the future of bilingual-intercultural

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

education. Most of all, they were going to discuss the adequacy of their teacher
preparation. It also impressed me that they were merely children (14-17 years
old), living far away from their homes, but enthusiastic at the prospect that they
would become teachers.

The night before the forum, I met with the students, and asked them for
recommendations that would help me bring this diverse audience closer to me,
but most importantly to the focus of the forum: Intercultural bilingual
education. Without hesitation, they said: Speak to them in Miskitu. That
evening they became my teachers, and I their pupil. They taught me how to
greet the audience in Miskitu. It became a long greeting, rehearsed during the
course of the evening. The following day, after hearing the Vice-Minister of
Education, the RAAN Governor, and the Chief of the American program and
main donor of the event, I greeted the over 200 participants to the First Forum
of Bilingual Education in the RAAN.

As I began to speak, silence invaded the room, except for a a few gasps. I
looked at my students, and seeing their smiles, I knew they approved. When we
took a short break between speeches and activities, they came to me, and one of
them, acting as spokesperson said:
You got their hearts in your hand!
Why? I asked.
Because everyone heard you in Miskitu.

Later, community leaders came to me to share their satisfaction of having heard

Miskitu, their language, for the first time in an official meeting. This was the
beginning of my love affair with the RAAN and its peoples.

I worked with Miskitu and Sumo-Mayangna educators in this region in many

projects, which necessitated extensive travel throughout the region under
inclement geographic and weather conditions. Nevertheless, the heat and the
difficult travel conditions were compensated by the way I was greeted at each
stop of my journey. It warmed my heart, especially during the seven hours it
took to travel upstream Rio Coco, when I heard people on the shore yelling,
Doctora! Doctora! Teacher! Teacher! Bienvenida! They had heard I was on
my way to some village, and they came to the shore to wave their hands. This
was their way to let me know they appreciated my efforts and understood how
much I cared for them and their children.

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

Working with educators in this region was exhausting, because Miskitu and
Sumo-Mayangnan teachers would come to my hotel at 7:00 a.m. with their
paper tablets and pens and pencils, ready to ask questions about how to teach
language, literacy, and intercultural education. We would congregate for formal
sessions from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and at the close of the session for the day,
they often followed me to my hotel to continue asking and writing way into the
evening. On my return to California after a week or two in the region, I was
exhausted, but immensely touched by their commitment to learn how to better
education for the students in the region.

The scope of my work included assessment, evaluation, training, material

development, curricular transformation, as main activities. I also developed
Spanish proficiency tests for students and teachers, which were used at the
national level. However, training took most of my time and their time. I was
inundated with a sense of admiration when I found out that many of the
teachers had to travel by foot, panga, truck, and air to attend the training
meetings, and that the trip took between 3-5 days each way. Nevertheless, they
came, they learned, they were enthusiastic, and in their enthusiasm they and I
had little sleep. I was privileged to work with and for them!

I was also commissioned to conduct a sociolinguistic study, which provided

insights on the reality of intercultural bilingual education. The most revealing
and relevant results were specific to how we use the mother and the target
languages and what we do in the classroom. The results pointed to the fact that
use of the languages must be consistent, for all purposes, and all functions.

Traveling back to United States, the scene was different. No federal or state
government commitment to mother languages, but on the contrary, anti-
bilingual movements that gave way to laws and policies obliging public schools
to use only English. The disregard for the number of limited-English proficient
students and the fact that this population is steadily growing at the state and
national levels, confirms what Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) names as linguistic
genocide. At the national level, in 2000-2001, there were 4.6 million limited-
English speaking students enrolled in public schools, and the expected numbers
by 2030 is 40% of the total school-aged population in the country (Thomas &
Collier, 2002). The policies of the federal government were consistent with the
disregard they had for the education of limited English speaking (LEP) students
in a language they could understand, the mother language. The fact that the
federal government changed the name of the Office of Bilingual Education and

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

Minority Languages Affairs to The Office of English Language Learning

reflected the Federal Governments indifference for the linguistic rights of
language minority students. The present administration has done nothing to
change this perception, and the name of the office remains as The Office of
English Language Learning.

In California, Proposition 227 required that all public school instruction be

conducted in Englishand the main goal of all programs was to make LEP
students fluent in English. This mandate placed enormous pressure on school
districts, in which the population of limited-English proficient students
outnumbers monolingual speakers of English. Teachers were placed between
the rock and the hard place: To continue to provide primary language
assistance to their students and face dismissal, or abide by the mandate fully
aware that their students could not advance academically. This is another
example of contempt for the linguistic rights of minority languages students.
However, it appears that policing the use of languages in the classroom has
become somewhat more relaxed.

Joshua Fishman (1976) described well the perceptions and sentiments in the
United States for bilingual education. He described it as the enrichment of the
rich and the disease of the poor. His description fits well, as we observe the
ongoing emergence of two-way bilingual immersion programs in Chinese-
English, Spanish-English, and other languages. These programs have been
aimed at the development of bilingualism (enrichment) for English
monolingual studentsnot for mother language development and maintenance.
The main goal of these programs has been the enrichment of English-
monolingual students, but with some hope to alleviate the linguistic illness of
minority language students by moving them away from their mother language
and bringing them into an all-English academic context. Irrespective of the
intent of these programs, minority language students are benefiting from them
because language development and academics are consistent throughout the
instructional day, and in these programs, language minority students have
access to academics in a language they can understand. It appears as though
dual language immersion programs have become the wave on which
mainstream and minority languages students are expected to surf toward
academic success.

Now, I would like to give you my vision of a dynamic, educational, and

socially- just multilingual society.

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

This is a society that understands the many challenges brought about by

multilingualism and multiplicity of cultures in contact. It recognizes that a
singular and most compelling challenge is that of educating ALL students so
that they become academically successful and prepared to live in a multilingual
and multiethnic global society. And, meeting this challenge requires the fusion
of the heart, mind, and soul of an entire community, member of a society
whose vision is grounded on the successful education for ALL students and on
the fact that what happens inside the classrooms begins with policies that must
be developed by educatorsnot based on political convenience or economic
considerations. This society demands that colleges and universities fully accept
their responsibility of being the cradle and the carriage on which educational
policies are formulated and carried toward their implementation. It also asks
that institutions of higher education recognize and accept their responsibility in
the liberation of oppressive practices in education by revitalizing the
preparation of language teachers. Universities can do this! However, this
revitalization entails bringing the mother languages present in their
communities to university classrooms and bringing to light the fact that
institutions of higher education can no longer continue to promote
multilingualism in society, while at the same time consenting to leave the
mother languages outside their gates. Furthermore, in this vision, universities
are committed to ensure that teachers trained in their institutions are fully
prepared, willing, and committed to change the world.

In this vision, teachers are fully cognizant of the difference between isolation
and engagement in their teaching practices. That is, between individual-specific
learning activities that often lead to stifling creativity and reduction of learning
to literal understanding of facts, and collaborative learning that provides the
opportunity for social dynamics leading to more vital thinking, intellectual
growth, and expansion of their linguistic and intellectual capacity.

Parents and community members are fully engaged in the creation of a

peaceful, yet vibrant community that recognizes and celebrates its linguistic
and cultural richness. They are also politically involved and willing to act
proactively for the enactment of laws aimed at freeing individuals and
communities from linguistic and cultural oppression; they do not silently accept
laws intended to restrict individual and collective thought and their expression
in the mother languages; and they are ready to react whenever and wherever

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

there are affronts against linguistic and/or ethno-cultural individuals or groups,

either through court systems, the ballot, or by peaceful rebellion.
This is the ideal society envisioned by the forefathers of American democracy.

Thank you for letting me share with you my passion for the teaching career; my
belief in the richness of a multilingual society; my experiences in bilingual-
intercultural education in Nicaragua, which illustrate challenges in multilingual
education, but at the same time depict teachers commitment to mother
languages.

I am confident that, as cultural workers, and with our heart and soul in our
hands, we can successfully guide our students to help us change the world.

References

Alexander, J. M. (2005). Ethnologue: languages of the world. Choice: Current

Reviews for Academic Libraries, 4297. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Crystal, D. (2000). Language death. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dallas, Texas: SIL International retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com/
Fishman, J. A. (1976). Bilingual education: An international sociological
perspective. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.). 2005 Languages of the World. 15th edition
retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com/
Headland, T. N. (2003). Thirty endangered languages in the philippines.
Summer Institute of Linguistics, 47.
McFarland, C. D. (2004). The Philippine language situation. World Englishes,
23(1), 59-75. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-971X.2004.00335.x
Moseley, C. (2010). Foundation for endangered languages. Newsletter, (41).
Nettle, D., & Romaine, S. (2000). The extinction of the world's languages. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2007). Teaching to change the world. San Francisco:
McGraw Hill.
Scebold, R. Central Tagbanwa: A Philippine Language on the Brink of
Extinction. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines in cooperation with

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Johannessen, G.G.
The heart, mind, and soul of a multilingual society

SIL Philippines. 2003.168 pp. Pb (9717800146)

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education, or worldwide
diversity and human rights. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Thomas, W.P., & Collier, V.P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness
for language minority students long-term academic achievement. Santa Cruz:
University of California Center for Research on Education, Diversity &
Excellence.

About the author:

Gloria Guzman Johannessen is is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the

Texas State University and is a consultant for the Guatemalan Ministry of Education,
the United States Office of International Development, and Juarez and Associates.

Email: BGJohannessen@txstate.edu; bgjohan@gmail.com

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