Around dismissal, the scene at a dual language elementary school in Austin, Brooklyn, or suburban Denver is usually the same. Parents congregate on the sidewalk, some conversing in Spanish, some in English, and some switching between the two with ease. With their backpacks partially zipped, kids pour out, yelling at one another in whatever language comes out first. On the surface, it appears to be the future that many people have been promised. two languages. Two societies. One classroom. Everyone is triumphant.
However, the more you examine, the more intricate it becomes. Three main objectives served as the foundation for two-way dual language programs, or TWDL: academic success, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competency. The reasoning was sophisticated. If English-dominant and Spanish-dominant children were placed in the same classroom and taught everything in both languages, the result would be a generation that could cross linguistic and cultural boundaries with ease. That pitch was successful for decades. Demand continues to rise. Waitlists are lengthy. Bilingual education is now promoted as enrichment by districts that previously viewed it as a remediation program.
However, after spending years in these classrooms, researchers have begun to pose a more subdued and awkward question. In reality, who is gaining? A 2019 study by Daniel, Deborah Palmer, Lisa Dorner, and Claudia Cervantes-Soon Despite their good intentions, Heiman contended that the initial three objectives are no longer sufficient. A fourth was suggested by them: critical consciousness. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, coined the phrase to describe a type of structural literacy—the capacity to read the power dynamics that shape a classroom in the same way that one reads a book. It sounds scholarly. In actuality, it could mean the difference between a program that quietly extracts and one that liberates.
Speaking with educators and parents at these schools gives me the impression that something has changed over the past ten years. In the United States, bilingual education was first created to help Spanish-speaking kids whose native tongue had long been viewed as a weakness by schools.
Gentrification and what scholars refer to as neoliberal ideology—a polite term for viewing bilingualism as a competitive advantage rather than a community right—are now reshaping those same programs. Spanish, which was once considered a low-status language in American schools, is now marketed to higher-class, frequently white families as a resume builder. In classrooms named after them, the Latinx students for whom the programs were designed are sometimes marginalized, outnumbered, and lack resources.
It’s difficult to ignore the tension. While her child’s English-speaking classmates receive praise for ordering tacos in Spanish during a field trip, a mother who was reprimanded for speaking Spanish at school as a child now witnesses this. The languages are identical. It’s not the reception. By teaching educators, parents, and even young children to question authority, listen critically, comprehend the background of their own schools, and sit with discomfort rather than smooth it over, critical consciousness aims to close that gap.
It’s still unclear if the field will truly embrace this fourth objective. It is important that organizations such as the Center for Applied Linguistics have made equity a guiding principle. However, lived classroom reality and guiding principles are not always the same thing. As dual language education develops, it seems to be at a fork in the road that it hasn’t fully recognized. Schools that are truly transformative follow one route. The alternative results in bilingual prestige academies that behave like everything that came before them and appear diverse in the brochure.
All of this is unknown to the children on the sidewalk. They are only proficient in two languages and can switch between them with ease. The part that is still being written is what the adults do with that fluency and who they determine it belongs to.
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