User:Mayachavez/Bilingual education

Bilingual Programs for Language Revitalization
Another role for bilingual programs is helping communities learn their endangered language through the education of children and adults. These dormant languages are heavily intertwined with the culture, place and identity of the subsequent community, so the creation of bilingual programs to help re-awaken the endangered languages is extremely beneficial. Generally speaking, the official primary and secondary languages of a country are favored for bilingual programs, but there have been emerging bilingual programs to re-introduce an endangered language to a community. These education policies are fundamental to a communities' and next generation's identity development. An example that hindered this is that of the residential schools of Canada. Children were punished severely for speaking their mother-tongue, which has caused generational trauma among a plethora of Indigenous persons who attended these schools throughout the country. . However, learning from events such as these, has helped spread awareness of language revitalization.

Bilingual programs for language revitalization are tricky; each language is different, and there is a lack of educational resources and training for teachers in that specific language. Furthermore, there is not enough research done on what the goal for bilingual programs is: is it cultural acknowledgment or bilingualism? Quite often there is a clash between the government educational policies and the actual implementation of said policies. That being said, there has been tremendous progress of working bilingual programs, one being in New Zealand. The Māori community in the Te Kōhanga Reo region created an early language childhood program that includes traditional customs of the culture. The program takes advantage of having native speakers while also recognizing that new and upcoming speakers can help the language adapt to more modern times.

Thanks to the emerging language revitalization programs, more communities can break free from an accommodation norm – feeling threatened to speak their native language due to political tensions, such as colonialism that still persists throughout most nations. The question of whose language and knowledge is more valuable should no longer linger with the help of these bilingual programs.