Bilingual Education and Social Change

Booknews

Freeman (education, U. of Pennsylvania) presents insight into how an actual dual-language program functions at the local level through a case study of planning and implementing such a program at a Spanish- English public elementary school in Washington, DC. She provides background on how it interacts with the larger sociopolitical context of minority education in the US, then analyzes how it challenges mainstream education practices that discriminate against minority students. She explains that rather than expecting language minority students to become English monoglots and assimilate to white middle- class norms, the program encourages all students to become bilingual in both languages and expects and respects linguistic and cultural diversity. Distributed by Taylor & Francis. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.