/n CRITICAL LANGUAGE AND LITERACY STUDIES: 23 Language, Education and Neoliberalism Critical Studies in Sociolinguistics Edited by Mi-Cha Flubacher and Alfonso Del Percio MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol Blue Ridge Summit DOI 10.21832/FLUBAC8682 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Flubacher, Mi-Cha, editor. | Percio, Alfonso Del, editor. Title: Language, Education and Neoliberalism: Critical Studies in Sociolinguistics/Edited by Mi-Cha Flubacher and Alfonso Del Percio. Description: Bristol, UK; Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, [2017] | Series: Critical Language and Literacy Studies: 23 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017014936| ISBN 9781783098682 (hardcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781783098675 (softcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781783098699 (pdf) | ISBN 9781783098705 (epub) | ISBN 9781783098712 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Language and education-Social aspects. | Neoliberalism-Social aspects. | Sociolinguistics. Classification: LCC P40.8 .L3669 2017 | DDC 306.44-dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2017014936 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-868-2 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-867-5 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2017 Mi-Cha Flubacher, Alfonso Del Percio and the authors of individual chapters. 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Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc. 4 From Language-as-Resource to Language-as-Struggle: Resisting the Coke-ification of Bilingual Education Nelson Flores Introduction A few years ago, I was working with a large urban school district on transforming its bilingual education programs. My primary role was to provide professional development to the district's bilingual teachers as they prepared for a shift away from transitional bilingual education that temporarily used Spanish with the goal of transitioning the students to English by third grade toward dual language bilingual education that sought to use both languages throughout elementary schools with the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy for participating students. A primary focus of this professional development was to introduce teachers to the concept of translanguaging which challenges the idea that dual language bilingual programs should be designed to keep the languages strictly separated and instead argues that they should be designed so that the two languages can be strategically brought together in ways that maximize bilingual language development (García, 2009). The teachers responded positively to the workshops and began to interrogate how they could maximize translanguaging as a tool for supporting their students in the move toward a dual language bilingual model that had the explicit goal of developing both languages. As part of this initiative, we also held parent meetings at all of the participating schools. One of the schools was in a gentrifying area of the district. A white mother came up to me after the meeting and wanted to consult with me about the possibility of having her children grow up trilingually. Her plan was for the children to get English from her, 62 From Language-as-Resource to Language-as-Struggle 63 Spanish from the new dual language bilingual program and Chinese from their nanny. Another school was in a low-income predominately Latinx¹ area of the district. Here, a Puerto Rican mother who came to the meeting reported that she had been a victim of domestic violence and that she and her daughter had been homeless for some time. She was worried that this had affected her daughter and though she did not know what a dual language bilingual program was, she was looking for any program that could provide her daughter with special support when she came to the school the following year. Both of these mothers were trying to navigate a large and complex urban school district in ways that would ensure their children received the best education possible. Of course, the vast differences in their life circumstances made their attempts at doing this look extremely different. Being confronted with these stark inequalities, I began to realize that while I had been prepared in my doctoral work to provide professional development for teachers related to the latest thinking in bilingual education, I was completely ill-equipped to address the larger political and economic inequalities that prevent these programs from reaching their full potential. This realization has led me to begin to reflect on how it is that I can advocate for bilingual education in a context of such vast inequalities. Though on the surface this question may seem like a question about the here-and-now, as I have begun this process of reflection it has quickly become apparent that the only way to begin to answer this question is through an examination of the historical context that has led to these vast inequalities. In this chapter, I examine this history. I do not seek to discuss the specifics of this particular urban school district. Instead, I seek to take a global perspective on these issues by situating the roots of contemporary inequalities within the rise of neoliberalism as a backlash to the global struggles for liberation that emerged post-World War II. Using the case of bilingual education for Latinxs in the United States, I will examine the ways that neoliberalism politically incorporated the demands of these social movements through the commodification of diversity in ways that left white supremacist and capitalist relations of power intact. In this context, bilingual education initiatives, like the one I am working to support, are positioned as anti-racist while in reality doing little to combat structural racism. My intention is not to critique such initiatives, especially since I continue to be an active participant in many of them. Instead, my goal is to attempt to envision an approach to language education policy that reconnects advocacy work for bilingual education to broader political struggles that seek to dismantle white supremacist and capitalist relations of power. 64 Language, Education and Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, Race and Applied Linguistics Neoliberalism is often described as the coalescing of institutional forces in support of the free flow of capitalism in ways that benefit transnational corporations and economic elites (Harvey, 2003; Klein, 2007). A major element of a movement toward corporatist governance is a process that Harvey (2003) refers to as accumulation by dispossession namely the process of making a profit by extracting wealth from marginalized populations. Accumulation by dispossession has always been an integral part of the working of capitalism. Historically, this came in the form of colonization, where Europeans invaded and conquered territories in order to force colonized peoples to extract the raw materials from these lands to support the industrialization of Europe and eventually the United States. With the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s, this accumulation by dispossession has taken on a new form through the privatization of public goods and the imposition of this privatization on much of the world's population through the efforts of both national governments and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) (Harvey, 2003). Critical applied linguists have used neoliberalism as a framework for analyzing the hegemony of English on the global market (Phillipson, 2009) as well as the role of transnational corporations in the development of English language curricula (Block et al., 2012). They have also used neoliberalism as a framework for theorizing the commodification of language itself. Heller (2003: 474) uses the case of francophone Canada as an illustrative study that documents ‘a shift from understanding language as being primarily a marker of ethnonational identity, to understanding language as being a marketable commodity on its own, distinct from identity'. She connects the francophone Canadian context to larger global trends where there is a changing relationship between the nation state and transnational corporations that has simultaneously led to the decreased influence of national identities alongside an increased interest in commodifying these same identities as part of the global tourism trade. An often overlooked aspect in studies of neoliberalism, both within and outside of critical applied linguistics, is the role of race in the production of and perpetuation of neoliberalism. In most cases, racial inequalities are considered a byproduct of neoliberalism. Yet, some scholars have challenged this unidirectional relationship and have, instead, argued that new racial formations are integral to the production of neoliberalism. In