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INTRODUCTION This paper is the collaborative effort of a small group of students in an introductory online college level anthropology course. Our group of four people is the “PARENTS GROUP.” Our group consists of four members: Coordinator: Jeanette Brochausen, Primary Researcher: Erica Davidson, Draft Writer: Kathy Owens, and Presentation Creator:. The purpose of our project was to conduct a literature review concerning the issues of linguistic nationalism and English-only laws in the Continental United States, given that the population of Spanish speakers is expanding greatly in many areas of the US. We then draw conclusions about how these issues are supported or opposed in our country, and especially about how they affect school-aged children and their parents. The four people in our group are all married women between the ages of 28 and 41, three with school-aged children. Three are native English speakers; one’s native language is Spanish. Three of the four speak at least one language well in addition to our native language. Among us, we have six children, three of whom are school-aged. Of these school-aged children, all attend public school in their neighborhoods. None of the public schools attended by our children could be considered racially diverse, and thus bilingual education at those schools has not been a concern. After reviewing relevant literature, our group concluded that forced English-only immersion is ineffective and inappropriate for children of school age whose native language is other than English. United States culture tends to oversimplify the issue of English-only instruction, maintaining that if people want to be part of our society they had better learn our language. This thinking ignores the fact, though, that for school-aged children it can be difficult or impossible to learn to read in write in another language before they have learned to do so using their native tongue (Arellano-Houchin, et al). LINGUISTIC NATIONALISM, ENGLISH-ONLY, AND THE SCHOOL-AGED CHILD Linguistic nationalism is the attempt by entire countries to proclaim their independence from others by ridding their country’s tongue of “foreign” terms (Haviland). Taken to the extreme, linguistic nationalism can result in the passage of laws mandating that only the “accepted” and “proper” language be used to educate children and to conduct business in public settings.
Approximate Word count = 1366
Approximate Pages = 5.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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