Literacy, schooling and ideology in a multilingual state

Abstract

In this article I argue that current government policy for teaching literacy in schools in England is part of a broader ideology of homogeneity which is visible in other dominant-culture institutions. Despite the multilingual nature of England and its schools, the dominant discourse is one which values English at the expense of other languages, leading to the ‘misrecognition’ (Bourdieu, 1998b: 131), by majority and minority language speakers alike, of English as the sole language of symbolic capital. While the first part of this article outlines the monolingual ideology of current literacy policy in schools in England, and locates this in the context of a similar ideology evident in discourses beyond education, I also suggest that this process of symbolic domination is not inevitable. Schools need not be sites of social and cultural reproduction. They can challenge existing relations of power in society, and put in place structures and practices which question and even reverse the coercive relations between majority-culture schools and minority-culture communities and their children. I propose some ways forward in the development of structures which can enable schools to become sites of social and cultural transformation, rather than reproduction.

Keywords:

• Literacy Ideologies Multilingualism Schooling Minorities