4 TESOL Journal

Re a d ers Resp ond

A Reader Reacts ...Kevin Cross

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas’s article “LinguisticHuman Rights—Are You Naive, or What?”(Autumn 1999) focuses on the language rightsof minority groups. Skutnabb-Kangas assertsthat these groups should be educated in additivebilingual programs. Although I agree that this isa worthy goal for educators, I must object to theauthor’s use of the Janulf (1998) case study andthe disparaging language in her article.

First, Skutnabb-Kangas highlights a casestudy of Finnish students in Sweden andSwedish-speaking students in Finland, whichshowed that children educated in additiveversions of bilingual programs retained bothlanguages. Although such a result is indeedinteresting and worthy of study, a number ofvariables make its relevance to the situationfaced by many U.S. school districts question-able at best. According to its 1998–1999annual report, the San Francisco UnifiedSchool District has students from 64 lan-guage backgrounds. Many of these lan-guages do not use the Roman alphabet. Somedo not even exist in written form. These fac-tors make the implementation of the nuts andbolts of additive bilingual programs (i.e.,qualified bilingual teachers, funds for theextra classrooms, teachers, and materials)extremely difficult in most educational set-tings in the United States, in which far morethan two languages are involved.

Second, I found the tone of Skutnabb-Kangas’s article offensive. DescribingESL/EFL as “McDonaldized” (p. 10) andESL/EFL instructors as “people runningaround the world posing as ESL/EFL experts”(p. 11, Note 5) is obviously an attempt to belit-tle anyone who teaches ESL/EFL in a mannerinconsistent with Skutnabb-Kangas’s additiveversion. Scholarly journals are meant to pro-vide a forum for the exchange of ideas andopinions, not for mudslinging.

Even more upsetting was Skutnabb-Kangas’s use of the word genocide in the

phrase linguistic genocide. Even though shetook care in defining the word as it relates tolanguage loss, the fact remains that it carriesa great emotional impact. To suggest that thesituations of American indigenous popula-tions in North and South America, Jews inEurope, Cambodians, and the Hutus inRwanda even remotely resemble the situa-tion of most immigrant children in theUnited States and Europe is inaccurate andshows a great disrespect for both the immi-grants and the people who were real victimsof genocide. The term linguistic genocidealso ascribes a character of evil to teacherswho, more often than not, work long hoursunder stressful conditions for inadequatesalaries.

We need to find practical solutions top ro blems such as lack of funds, lack ofq u a l i fied bilingual educat o rs, and diffe r-ing attitudes towa rd bilingual education.

I invite Skutnabb-Kangas to use her exper-tise in the field of language acquisition andimmigrant rights to help construct better bilin-gual education models, both in the UnitedStates and Europe. Go to classrooms, talk toteachers, administrators, parents, and students,see what the actual conditions are that makegetting a good, additive bilingual education achallenge. We need to find practical solutionsto problems such as lack of funds, lack ofqualified bilingual educators, and differingattitudes toward bilingual education. Usinghyperbolic language and inappropriate analo-gies, while perhaps furthering Skutnabb-Kangas’s academic career, will do little in theway of creating meaningful dialogue or bring-ing about changes in how immigrant childrenare educated.

Kevin CrossUniversity of San Francisco and

San Francisco City CollegeSan Francisco, California, USA

E-mail: crossk@usfca.edu

The Author Responds ...Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

What follows are short comments on KevinCross’s points. First, situations with onlytwo languages are unusual in Scandinavia,too. One of my own studies in Sweden(1987) was done in a school that taught 57mother tongues as subjects and had mother-tongue-medium education for severalgroups. In a study of all municipalities withmore than 100 immigrant minority studentsin Denmark (meaning most municipalities inthe country), Rahbek Pedersen and I (1983)could ascertain that it would have been pos-sible to organize at least early-exit transi-tional programs for over 70% of thechildren. Not doing so for them, under thepretext that it cannot be done for everybody,is one way of participating in their forcedassimilation. Not having qualified bilingualteachers and materials (e.g., in the UnitedStates) to assist minority language studentsis a result of not having planned for them,even though many minority groups havebeen in Western countries for decades, somefor centuries.

I am sorry that Cross finds the tone ofmy contribution offensive; it is not meantto be. Provocative? Yes, of necessity,because the issues are important and whathappens is upsetting. Please read the intro-duction to Linguistic Genocide inEducation, or Worldwide Diversity andHuman Rights? (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000),where I argue for the use of the strongterms, despite the emotional impact (andwhere concepts such as M c D o n a l d i z a t i o nare also defined). In the book, I try to bemore nuanced than one can be in a shortarticle. Many others also see education inthe United States in similar ways that comeunder the present U.N. Genocide Convention’s(U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights,1948) definitions of genocide, for example, as“causing serious ... mental harm” (Article II [b])(see Wong & Baugh, as cited in Hall &

Comments on Tove Skutnabb - K a n ga s ’s

“Linguistic Human Rights—Are You Naive, or Wh at ? ”

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