Heritage-Language Education Policies, Anti-Racist Activism, and Discontinuity in 1970s and 1980s Toronto

Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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Heritage Education; Educational Policy; Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction; Advocacy; Blacks; Racial Bias; Educational History; Foreign Countries; Activism; Program Implementation; Second Language Programs; Language Maintenance; Cultural Maintenance; Program Descriptions; Social Problems; Policy Analysis; Correlation; Native Language Instruction; Official Languages; Multilingualism; Federal Legislation; Immigrants; Immigration; Minority Group Students; Elementary Secondary Education

Canada; Canada (Toronto)

10.1080/15427587.2020.1713787

1542-7587

This paper examines the intersection of heritage-language education advocacy with anti-racist activism in the 1970s and 1980s in Toronto. The province of Ontario initiated the Heritage Languages Program in 1977. By focusing on discontinuities in the policy's implementation, the paper identifies multiple strategies that Black anti-racist activists used to expand the understanding of heritage language to be more inclusive of "all" forms of racial and linguistic difference. Although anti-racist activists may not have succeeded, we argue here, recovering their arguments can -- and should -- inform current efforts to deepen linguistically- and culturally-sustaining programs in Ontario schools. The first part of the paper describes the historical context in which "heritage language" became a social problem recognizable to Canadian society. It is in this context that the Heritage Languages Program emerged as a policy solution to the perceived problem of racial and linguistic difference in Ontario. The second part reports our analysis of the intersection between public deliberation over the HLP and advocacy against anti-Black racism in the 1970s and early 1980s.

As Provided

2020

EJ1244307