Critically assessing the 1968 Bilingual Education Act at 50 years: Taming tongues and Latinx communities

ABSTRACT

As the 1968 Bilingual Education Act (BEA) reaches its 50th anniversary, we provide a critical historical review of its contradictory origins and legacy. By distilling the BEA’s history into three periods that we label “power to the people,” “pride for the people,” and “profit from the people,” we demonstrate that the bill was never meant to fully support 1960s Latinx activists’ goal for a race radical bilingual education to confront racism and structural inequities, yet it offered a transitory moment in which aspirations for such goals were partially realized. This finding is significant, as the article concludes by exploring what possibilities there are to create new moments to imagine more in this neoliberal multicultural era of dual language education, where bilingualism and cultural diversity are too often commodified off the proverbial backs of Latinx youth.

Notes

^1. We recognize the incomplete account offered here, as we do not have the space to include a longer history that rightfully highlights how indigenous peoples and languages across the Americas were also colonized and extinguished as a product of settler colonialism enacted by the United States, as well as by Spain and Mexico. For more on this important layered history see (Lowe, 2015; Wolfe, 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ofelia García

Ofelia García is a professor in the Ph.D. programs in Urban Education and Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. García has published widely in the areas of bilingualism and bilingual education, the education of emergent bilinguals, sociology of language, and language policy. She is a member of the National Academy of Education.

Kenzo K. Sung

Kenzo K. Sung, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Urban Education and Education Foundations, and affiliated faculty with Africana Studies and American Studies, at Rowan University. His research areas include urban education and policy, bilingual education, ethnic studies, critical race theory, history of education, political economy, and social movements and reforms.