Razprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, March 1986, No.18 
Inka Strukelj UDC 376.744:316.356.72 
Institute of Sociology 
Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 
BILINGUAL/BICULTURAL EDUCATION: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS* 
Introduction 
Since the theme of this paper covers such a vast area, we will 
deal only with some of the major factors influencing the setting 
up and maintenance of bilingual education, 
Bilingual education, or better, language education policy in 
multilingual societies, has become a central concern in modern 
societies. For reasons as varied as they are complex, educational 
Planners, educators, and linguists worldwide are today involved 
in developing and carrying out an array of problems which often 
have little more in common that the fact that they make use of 
two or more languages in the formal education of children. 
Bilingual education is not a unitary thing and no assessment of 
its influence can be made, because such influence may vary with 
the variety of conditions of its occurrence. Bilingual programs, 
on the other hand, have such a multitude of forms, embedded in 
such diverse political and socioeconomical contexts, interacting 
with such distinct consequences as to make the designation 
“bilingual education" by itself more frequently a term of 
obfuscation than of enlightenment (Kjolseth, 1972). The term 
“bilingual schools" means many things even in the same country, 
and in any discussion is likely to mean different things to 
different persons with the potential of conflict either in fact 
or perception (Cziko and Troike, 1984). Differences in program 
orientation, organization and content as well as variations in 
micro and macro environments frequently reflect differences in 
the reason for which they were established (MacKey, 1972a; 
Fishman and Lovas, 1972; Mackey and Beebe, 1978). 
Public education is mostly a reflection of socioeconomic and 
political realities. As the institutions of education stand 
between the dominant institutions of politics and the economy, to 
focus upon any education program in isolation from the 
surrounding social forces which form its immediate context can 
only produce a misleading picture of what is actually there. All 
education, more than educational enterprises, is deeply embedded 
in complex historical, political, economic, social, cultural and 
Psychological contexts, many of which may not be immediately 
obvious. 
In attempting to arrive at a better understanding of the complex 
Phenomenon of bilingual education, careful generalization may be 
made and interpreted with caution since each social setting and 
each individual program can to some extent be unique. Bilingual 
  
* Original: English 
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education partakes of social and ethnic structure, economic 
development, cultural capital, cognitive behaviour, pedagogical 
practice and so on (Spolsky and Cooper, 1977). Although it 
partakes of many aspects of language planning, it cannot be 
reduced merely to a facet of that field, or even treated as a 
technical question of applied linguistics, but it should be 
treated as an educational enterprise and institutional process 
deeply embedded in a sociocultural context. 
We may be misled by the slogan of modern linguistics that 
anything can be said in any language, as this slogan refers to 
the potential equality of languages, as expressions of human 
nature, while as expressions of historical, political and social 
experience, languages are not equivalent. The natural acquisition 
and formal learning of language in multinational societies is 
determined by the correlation between ethnic groups and social 
classes and type of language, the effects of social awareness and 
of possibilities of social mobility, the allocation by the 
community of different functional roles to different languages, 
and the language attitudes that provide the basis for that 
allocation (Savard and Vigneault, 1975; Giles, Bourhis and 
Taylor, 1977). 
Non-reciprocal political economy produces non reciprocal inter- 
and intra-group forms of bilingualism. For the majority group 
bilingualism is additive and in no way presents a threat to its 
language maintenance. For the minority bilingualism tends to be 
in many surrounding displacive or replacive and presents a major 
threat towards language shift. This difference is a clear basic 
reflection of the distinct effects of a particular economy on two 
speech communities including school programs and their effects. 
There is considerable literature on bilingualism covering a wide 
range of aspects of language competence at the level of 
individual abilities (Paradis, 1978; Spolsky and Cooper, 1978; 
Hornby, 1977; Swain and Cummins, 1979) and descriptions of 
societal situations at the level of community interaction 
(Fishman, 1976; Simoes, 1976; Spolsky and Cooper, 1977). Only 
recently the researchers’ attention has shifted from analysis of 
the features characteristic of individual bilingualism to 
societal factors which promote or threaten it within the 
community. They turned their attention to the fact that equal 
opportunities and social emancipation of minority/migrant groups 
is not controlled by linguistic, but by political and economic 
factors that the long term goal of the great majority of 
bilingual programs was - and still remains - proficiency in the 
majority language, not language maintenance and societal 
bilingualism. They also began to be deeply concerned with those 
policies stating as their official goal social pluralism, but 
actually confining bilingualism and biculturalism to the school 
without any attempt to effect upon community diglossia and 
without changing the nature of a basically monolingual and 
monocultural society. 
Multiculturalism and Bilingual Education 
The multiculturalism movement, as a political movement, seeks 
public recognition for ethnic groups as part of the total 
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society. The ideology set forth by the proponents of 
multiculturalism takes seriously the idea of unity and diversity 
and articulates the notion that people are different even though 
they are alike, the difference being not intended to mean that 
some are superior and other inferior. The ideology of 
multiculturalism is not related to be the old nationalistic idea 
of superiority of one's own culture but as a plural ideology 
where cultural differences are seen as good, and all to be 
respected. 
We are witnessing a revival of interest in the area of study 
variously called intergroup relations, majority-minority 
relations, and ethnic studies. While the "why" of this revival is 
an important question for the sociology of science, and more so, 
for the sociology of knowledge, the current revival in ethnic 
group studies seems to be something more than just a rekindling 
of intellectual interest, but a reformation of the basic 
conceptual and theoretical tools with which the interactions of 
diverse social groups, and the societies in which they live, are 
understood. As the result of this current way of thought, we are 
experiencing the emergence of what Kuhn (1962) for the sciences 
generaliy, and Friedrichs (1970) for sociology in particular, 
have called a new "paradigm," resulting in the formation of 
fundamentally new perspectives from which theory and research 
about intergroup relations may be conducted and applied in life. 
Multiculturalism is an essentially generalized tolerance for 
ethnic diversity in one's society and requires ethnic group 
affirmation and consolidation, maintained and improved tolerance 
levels generally in the society, and the dissemination of the 
multicultural point of view through community and school 
programs. Multiculturalism is a situation where own-group and 
other-group cultures are valued, and where major common social 
and political institutions are developed to tie all together. 
Multiculturalism implies three questions of importance to 
individuals living in plural societies: 1) Is it considered of 
value to maintain one's distinctive identity and cultural group 
characteristics? 2) Is it considered of value to maintain 
positive relationships among the cultural groups within the 
society? and 3) Which group, the majority or the minority, 
benefits from a multicultural policy, or do both? 
The policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework 
encourages the retention, development and sharing of the cultural 
heritage by all groups in a country, intergroup harmony, and this 
is to be achieved by improving confidence in one's own identity, 
and by sharing cultures among all groups. When bilingualism and 
biculturalism are accepted as value objectives resulting from a 
multicultural policy, it is necessary to change the structure of 
the educational system for both the majority and the minority. 
As social diversity rather than uniformity characterizes modern 
society, the social management of diversity becomes a relevant 
question in considering integration or separation of minority 
groups from the mainstream society. Patterns of schooling are 
obviously instrumental in managing diversity just as they 
transmit some of the symbols of cultural unity. 
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Education is basically a process of communication through which 
the individual internalizes the symbolic frame of reference of 
his culture. With this material he builds up his own internal 
frame of reference and organizes his behaviour according to the 
prevalent social patterns. The communication is performed with 
the help of verbal languages which codify the symbolic system of 
common frames and provides basic cues to organize behaviour 
(Berger and Luckman, 1972). Language is thus the basic tool of 
cultural unity. 
"It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his 
mother tongue. Psychologically, it is the system of meaningful 
signs that in his mind works automatically for expression and 
understanding. Sociologically, it is a means of identification 
among the members of the community to which he belongs. 
Educationally, he learns more quickly through it than through an 
unfamiliar linguistic medium" (UNESCO, 1953:11). 
The aims of bilingual/bicultural education are as diverse as the 
aims of the society itself, for in the final analysis they are 
determined by the values accepted by the society. Equal 
partnership in education implies equal educational opportunities 
for majority and minority children. For a minority group, equal 
partnership also means the possibility of preserving its ethnic 
and cultural identity. The majority by force of number and 
usually of power is able to develop its educational system in 
response to its own needs while the minority can draw attention 
to its special needs but it must rely on the understanding and 
multicultural policy orientation of the majority if it is to have 
access to an educational system which reflects its needs. 
A major goal in bilingual education, as of all formal education, 
should be the students’ acquisition of a body of knowledge and 
skills which is necessary for successful performance as an adult 
in that society. The development of language/communicative 
competence in the first and second language should be stimulated 
in a meaningful context and designed to support the rest of the 
curriculum, and to assure that the language experiences of the 
child are meaningful and comprehensible. Besides, bilingual 
education, like all education, has the power to transform, but 
only if it transcends contextual factors inside and outside the 
school and creates a context of its own which will enable the 
child to make the most of whatever educational experience is 
available. 
Bicultural education is most essential for the development of a 
value system, and education for attitudes of acceptance, 
openness, and equality and concomitant behaviour. There are some 
prerequisites for bicultural education if the child is to develop 
a value system which allow him to greet the fellow children, 
individually or as members of a group, on equal terms with 
himself or his group, and based on a sense of equality to both 
express and administer justice in all his human interactions. It 
seems to us that three basic conditions are necessary: first, as 
an individual, the child must be freed of the crippling, 
ungratified need for security, for membership, and for self- 
esteem, which prevents the growth of the democratic, tolerant 
personality; second, he must be exposed to content, experiences, 
and models which teach these values to him and from which he may 
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learn; and third, as increased knowledge does not necessarily 
imply increased respect, understanding, or acceptance, he must be 
in an environment which not only allows but encourages and 
rewards the situational expression of the values he has learned. 
All children need knowledge of human behaviour which cuts across 
two or more groups, sharpened interpersonal skill for use where 
ambiguity of meaning is a commonplace, and attitudes which permit 
this knowledge and these skills to be utilized in productive 
interaction. The acquisition of confident and easy openmindedness 
to variations in patterns of behaviour and values, in short a 
generalized stance of the intellectual and emotional receptivitiy 
which permits communication and human transaction to occur. 
The assessment of language/communicative competence in both 
languages and the choice of the bilingual/bicultural program 
closely depends on the standard demanded by the community and on 
the decisions and policies made by its social institutions 
(Mackey, 1977a). In this context, definitions and descriptions of 
individual and societal bilingualism, have to undergo 
considerable revision, in the light of different policies, which 
in turn promote, tolerate or disdain language and cultural 
diversity and pluralism within the political, economic, social 
and cultural aspirations of the overall society (UNESCO, 1977). 
Issues of Bilingual Education 
The past decades have witnessed a remarkable growth in bilingual 
education throughout the world. A considerable number of studies 
have been concerned with language teaching in multilingual 
settings. The research literature was faced with a complex of 
societal questions and educational problems of interdisciplinary 
nature. One common objective of these research studies was the 
improvement of academic performance of children of minority and 
migrant populations. Their school failure brought to the general 
attention a number of social, economic and cultural problems, and 
in particular their education being provided to them in a medium 
different from their native language and from that of their 
community life. There was a growing awareness that the assessment 
Of language competence as well as the choice of bilingualism 
depend on the standards required by the community and on the 
policies and decisions made by its social institutions. The 
attention was therefore focused on the goals and processes 
inherent in monolingual/compensatory 
education, 
partial/transitional and maintenance bilingual education and on 
the social and educational outcomes of these measures. 
In the U.S.A., the site of one of the most massive pense 
shifts in the world history, in the mid-1960s massive discussion 
on bilingualism and bilingual education developed pee teat 
sociological and educational level. While at the socio phe 
level the discussion was focused on minority an ipeKing for 
and their culture carrying nature in a Snare cac lonal 
alternatives 
to the assimilative 
nypothesis, at et rated by the 
level the effectiveness of compensatory PURE ses winnctty 
majority group was questioned as it Se ee adapt them to 
children's linguistic repertoire and attempt ty. The discussion 
the socio-cultural model of the dominant socie » i Sa he 
was concentrated on the state of minority languages 
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community and their use as media of instruction, on typologies of 
bilingual education required to realise the objectives of 
societal multilingualism and multiculturalism. The role of Ll and 
L2 in the curriculum and the impact of minority language 
maintenance in the wider socio-cultural context were identified 
as two major aspects of bilingual/bicultural programs. 
At the same time two aspects of bilingual education were 
discussed: 1) compensatory/transitional education which favours 
the use of the minority language to enable the child to master 
subjects until adequate skills in the second language are 
developed. The outcome of this imposed and absorptive model is 
transitional bilingualism for the child and assimilation for the 
minority groups; 2) in the maintenance model the minority 
language is used as a more stable medium of instruction and the 
majority language is gradually introduced until both become media 
of instruction for all subjects. The outcome is believed to be 
balanced bilingual competence in the child and cultural pluralism 
in the community. It was especially stressed that if the minority 
wants to preserve its own language, it should become diglossic 
for compartmentalised intragroup in intergroup purposes (Fishman, 
1967, 1980). 
Several large-scale evaluations of the effectiveness of bilingual 
education in the U.S.A. (largely introduced in 1968 after the 
Bilingual Education Act had been approved) concluded that 
bilingual programs had not been shown to be effective (Baker and 
de Kanter, 1981). Bilingual children were, it was believed, 
backward in school, they scored poorly in intelligence tests and 
appeared to be socially maladjusted. Some researchers detected 
language handicaps, some spoke of mental confusion, and found 
mental development reduced by half. But all of these studies used 
definitions of bilingualism which were too vague and did not take 
into consideration the significant factors such as socio-economic 
status, the'‘cultural level, and the degree of linguistic 
proficiency and linguistic dominance of the children studied. 
These studies have met serious criticism from other researchers 
as to poor quality and partly because of their evident bias 
against bilingual education (Fishman, 1977; Dulay and Burt, 1978; 
Troike, 1978). More recent research demonstrated that 
bilingualism, far from being detrimental, can enhance 
intellectual development. 
An important context to be considered in this discussion is 
bilingual education for majority-language children. By this is 
meant children whose native language is that of the majority of 
the country and also the official language of the country. 
Examples of this context are the French "immersion" programs for 
the teaching of Spanish, French, or German in the U.S.A. and 
various binational and international schools found in the major 
cities of many countries (Lambert and Tucker, 1972; Mackey, 
1972b; Titone, 1979). What is common to these bilingual education 
programs is that they are provided primarily for children who are 
of the dominant language and ethnic group of the country for the 
purpose of developing proficiency in a second language which 
(usually) enjoys high status. The most thoroughly researched and 
best known programs of this type are the Canadian immersion 
programs which have recently spread throughout all the provinces 
and major cities of Canada (Cziko, et al., 1979, 1980; Swain and 
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Lapkin, 1982; Lambert, 1982). The well documented and replicated 
findings regarding language learning in immersion programs have 
important implications for theories of language learning, reading 
and bilingualism and for the potential use and advantages of 
bilingual education programs in other contexts. 
Research findings are consistent in showing that elitist 
bilingual education has never been a problem. Privileged children 
from the dominant group do well academically whether they are 
educated in their mother tongue or in a second language. In 
comparing the context of language immersion programs for majority 
children with other bilingual education settings it is necessary 
to stress that the success of the immersion model is likely due 
at least in part to the fact that these children for the most 
part come from middle-class families which provide a rich native 
language environment at home, that the children are enrolled in 
these programs at parental request, and that the programs 
themselves have often developed as a result of a parental 
initiative. It is also necessary to point out that after an 
initial period of immersion in the second language, the two 
languages are expanded until they develop parity in the school 
curriculum. Besides they do not present any threat to the pupils’ 
native language primarily because of the school program design 
itself. In the resulting additive bilingualism, each of the two 
linguistic and cultural entities contribute complementary and 
constructive elements to the development of the child. 
In contrast, when minority children are placed in monolingual 
majority language educational settings, their native language 
skills often rapidly decline, which was termed “subtractive” 
bilingualism (Lambert, 1977). Subtractive bilingualism is said to 
exist if the contribution of the two linguistic and cultural 
entities are not complementary but competitive and therefore 
represent a threat to the children's cultural identity. 
These factors are of crucial importance to keep in mind, since 
critics of bilingual education (especially of minority ethnic 
groups) have erroneously taken the successful results of 
immersion programs as evidence that minority and migrant children 
could likewise develop second language proficiency and be 
successful in schools if they were similarly immersed (actually 
submerged) in the majority or official language of the country, 
with no provision made for the use of their native language at 
school. 
An alternative in minority children education is the provision of 
two separate educational systems with the majority language as 
the language of instruction in one and the minority language as 
the language of instruction in the other. Such linguistic 
separation is practiced to some extent in various countries. For 
the minority this separation is a potential aid to linguistic 
survival but it also poses difficult problems connected with the 
social context, as such separation can result in linguistic and 
ethnic segregation. A separate educational system for the 
minority offers apparent linguistic equality, but it may not 
provide equivalent educational opportunities. The emphasis on the 
linguistic and cultural needs of the minority must not obscure 
the importance of other aspects of education. If educational 
Opportunities are limited, students may not have the chance to 
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develop their talents and skills. This will involve a loss not 
only to the individual child but also to his/her minority group 
as a whole. (Fishman, 1979). 
When we talk specifically about Europe, we refer to several 
different economic and political entities with a variety of 
economic and political situations within which individual 
linguistic conditions show different patterns of orientation. 
Apart from language diversity resulting from the presence of 
autochthonous ethnic minorities, individual countries' 
sociolinguistic situation also varies considerably between 
multidialectism involving similar and mutual intelligible or 
dissimilar social varieties (dialects). Growing rapidly since the 
Second World War, language diversity in Europe has largely 
resulted from migration movements which involved several thousand 
hundreds unemployed or underemployed labourers from less 
developed European areas (mainly from Mediterranean countries) 
normally from one country to another, but also within the same 
country (e.g. South-North of Italy and Yugoslavia). 
Until the end of the 60's bilingual education resulting from 
educational policies could be reduced to six basic models: 1) 
monolingual schooling in the national official languages for 
speakers of other national varieties (dialects); 2) monolingual 
schooling in the national official language for minority speakers 
either of low status but elsewhere national languages and for 
authochthonous minority languages; 3) monolingual schooling in 
the elsewhere national languages for autochthonous minority 
speakers; 4) bilingual schooling in mulinational countries like 
Switzerland or in countries with autochthonous minority speakers 
of high status languages protected by international treatises 
(like French and German in Italy); 5) bilingual education for 
middle upper class children in highly privileged private or 
international schools and 6) schooling in one or two of the 
official languages of the receiving countries for children of 
migrant populations. This covers also those primary and secondary 
school curricula which may include the migrant child's national 
language. 
Although research has long been involved in various aspects of 
the educational advantages of bilingual schooling in 
multinational countries, bilingual education in international 
schools and of the possible disadvantages of monolingual 
schooling in the national official language, a major impetus to 
discussion and research on bilingualism and bilingual education 
was provided by studies of the linguistic segregation of migrants 
and of monolingual schooling for their children. 
The education of immigrant groups represents the most widespread 
context for bilingual education in most European industrialized 
countries like West Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom 
(Bhatnagar, 1981). The objectives of bilingual programs found in 
these contexts may vary to some degree, but most have the same 
basic rationale of using the native language of the children to 
ease the transition to the usual language of instruction in the 
school (usually the national language of the receiving country) 
and at the same time to prevent academic retardation by allowing 
the children to learn some of the school curriculum in their 
native language while proficiency in the second language is 
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developing. Although the so-called maintenance programs are 
intended to develop students’ proficiency in their native 
language, most programs are in fact transitional in nature with 
students being moved out of bilingual classes into regular all 
second language classrooms as soon as their second language is 
deemed adequate (Tosi, 1982). 
The language situation of migrant children is to a great extent 
characterized by an official policy that has failed to integrate 
the bilingual needs of the children and their families. Migrant 
children experience the pressures and conflicts of maintaining 
the cultures and languages of their parents in a predominantly 
unilingual receiving country. Unable to preserve an authentic 
model of their original culture, immigrant children are in danger 
of succumbing to a process of deculturation different from the 
transculturation process that affects their parents, rooted as 
they are in their own culture. While a confrontation between the 
two cultures is always rewarding, the loss of the native culture 
can only give rise to difficulties and conflicts. Forging the 
native culture for that of the receiving country is likely to 
cause psychological disturbances, since the obligation from the 
individual to appropriate values which might conflict with those 
of his home culture is a source of anxiety. The concept of anomie 
explains this conflict (Beardsmore, 1977). The child who has to 
switch from one cultural group to another must readjust his 
patterns of behaviour to the new standards. He himself is faced 
with an incoherent frame of reference, leading to isolation, 
bewilderment and anxiety as well as pathological reactions 
(rejection and refusion of the receiving country culture). 
Since the mid-70's debate, research has seemed to be equally 
concerned with the teaching of the receiving country's language, 
the maintenance of the native language and also with the 
children's linguistic and academic problems in case of return. 
The migrant children's education largely depends on the different 
political and economic situations in different countries and 
their language programs for migrant children can be traced: 1) 
the submersion model with extra remedial classes in the country’s 
national language; 2) the compound model with a small portion of 
the timetable for the practice of native language skills while 
the receiving country national language remains the predominant 
medium of instruction and 3) the bilingual model where 
instruction is offered mainly through the native language with an 
increasing portion of the timetable in the receiving country 
language taught as a second language in migrant children classes. 
The first model could be labelled as assimilationist, the second 
transitional, while the third is oriented through language 
maintenance to bilingualism and biculturalism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 
T. and P. Toukomaa, 1976). 
In the research studies connected with language competence the 
notion of semilingualism has been used as a term to describe the 
type of faulty linguistic competence which has been observed in 
children who have since early childhood had contact with two 
languages without sufficient or adequate training and stimulation 
in either of the two languages. The notion of semilingualism and 
its critical appraisals within the sociopolitical framework have 
brought about discussion and research that indicates the 
inadequacy of monolingual L2 education and in supporting the 
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hypothesis that instruction and literacy in Ll could counteract 
the negative effects of double semilingualism (Paulston, 1975; 
Skutnabb-Toukomaa, 1976; Cummins, 1976; Brent, 1979). It was also 
noted that the origin of the children's low academic achievement 
and worse social opportunities was the inadequacy of the language 
education offered by schools. It was argued that the notion of 
semilingualism from a social conflict perspective aims to 
integrate and evaluate the concept within a sociological 
framework of community relations and that the macro social 
factors as economic, power conflict and social class translate 
into language behaviour at the micro social level and thus 
accounting for the low performance of different migrant children 
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 1978; Cummins, 1979). 
Knowing the context of bilingual education it is obvious that the 
implications of linguistic theories to different contexts where 
social and educational change take place is not sufficient to 
evaluate language policies, educational measures and language 
competence. While applied linguistics has provided valuable 
contributions to theory and research, other social disciplines 
should be included in the study of the socio-political reality 
and the problems of minority/migrant children. In the last decade 
bilingual education began to be viewed not only as an autonomous 
area of research where linguistic attainment and academic results 
could be assessed and compared only on pedagogical grounds but as 
a field of interdisciplinary research oriented towards macro 
socio-economic factors which lead to different types of bilingual 
education and inter-ethnic relations. 
Most bilingual programs have done little assessment of outcomes 
on a large scale of measures, leaving us without information 
about background mediating variables such as child and family 
characteristics, language use in the home, native language, 
literacy level, affective factors, teacher allocation of time by 
language, community involvement, and so on. As far as research on 
bilingualism and bilingual education is considered a crucial 
task, it is necessary to move from normative descriptions to 
analysis of actual occurrences and outcomes. We urgently need 
more contextualized accounts which will identify the macro socio— 
economic and geopolitical coordinates that impinge upon bilingual 
program designs and outcomes as well as studies capable of 
discovering what actually goes on in specific bilingual programs. 
We also need to know the actual social, academic and linguistic 
differences the programs make for carefully differentiated 
sociolinguistic categories of children. 
No feature of bilingual education can be considered in itself 
either assimilationist or pluralist as it is only within the 
specific socio-economic and political context of ethnic relations 
that any program feature takes relevance in one or another 
direction. A realistic evaluation of bilingual education should 
attempt to relate on linguistic, psychological, sociological, 
economic, political, religious and cultural factors. It could be 
said that the social factors are not only important for the 
understanding of bilingual education but that they represent 
powerful forces governing the success or failure of bilingual 
education. Only considering macro social factors which have rons 
to a particular form of mono- or bilingual education oa e 
educational and not only the linguistic outcome be evaluated and 
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the long-term implications of that language and minority policy 
assessed, 
While for a long time research on bilingual education has been 
under a strong influence of the functional structural theory of 
social change which seeks the solution of educational problems in 
terms of pedagogical efficiency within the curriculum, adopting 
the alternative model, the conflict theory, and treating 
bilingual education as the result of certain social factors 
rather than as the cause of certain behaviours in the children, 
adequate solutions to educational problems outside the programs 
could be foreseen. 
Concluding Comments 
Even a superficial review of the literature shows that there 
exists today a confrontation between two powerful theoretical 
perspectives for the analysis of ethnic group relations (i.e. the 
long established theory of assimilation and the recently emerged 
theories of social pluralism) which in turn may have deep 
consequences not only for social theory but also for social 
policies regarding ethnic groups. 
One of the main problems of all modern centralized societies, 
with scientific-technological development rapidly changing the 
environment, behavioural patterns and lifestyle of the preceding 
generations, is how the different ethnic groups can retain their 
cultural identity in a way that guarantees the existence of their 
traditional values, languages, norms and conceptions of reality. 
Social unity and cohesion needed for peaceful coexistence and 
common societal goals should therefore not presuppose on the part 
of minorities a giving up of the ways they understand and 
motivate their own socio-cultural existence. 
The language of the dominant majority has been and continues to 
be the language of power and social mobility subjecting the 
dominated minorities to assimilative pressures. In multiethnic 
and multilingual countries the use of the language of various 
population groups in the educational system is a crucial test in 
determining the ability of these groups to develop and maintain 
their own characteristics, their own culture and their own 
traditions. If ethnic groups wish to maintain their identity in a 
pluralistic society, they need to pass on their distinctiveness 
to their offspring. In the process of individual development, the 
child needs to adopt a set of motivations, attitudes, and 
personality traits moulded within the context of his ingroup and 
society. Early childhood seems to be an important stage of 
development if the child is to identify with his heritage and 
ingroups. The language of a minority group being an essential 
element of its culture, its capacity of survival as a cultural 
group, is in jeopardy, if no instruction is given in that 
language. Therefore, the efficiency of measures concerning the 
Cultural life of groups deprived of instruction in their language 
is open to question. 
The minority language group is usually definable by virtue of its 
lack of control over the levels of power in the society. This 
subordinate position in which ethnic groups are placed is the 
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central criterion which defines them as “minorities” (Tajfel, 
1978). The goals of the minority are rarely considered in the 
development of educational programs: the goals of most 
educational programs are explicitly or implicitly predefined for 
the minority by the majority. Dominant groups are not likely to 
tolerate minority goals which are too far at variance from their 
own level of power and control over their lives. As success in 
school and the larger society is defined by those in power, 
alternative potential measures of success in the terms of the 
minority group are usually ignored in favour of the former. 
While bilingual education in its narrowest sense takes place in 
the classroom, its most significant consequences take place in 
society where wealth, work, identity, status, power and language 
are so intricately intertwined. It is a general tendency to 
regard bilingual education as a major influence on the 
maintenance of language and cultural pluralism. There is often 
considerable overemphasis on the role of the school as a 
potential factor in social change. The school tends more to be 
led by the prevailing society than to be its vanguard, and this 
is especially so in language matters. Consequently, such 
important issues as bilingual and bicultural education, language 
and identity maintenance, and the bettering of relations between 
minority and majority groups may be seen as being served to a 
large degree by the school, while in fact, their success is 
dependent mainly upon forces within the larger community. If the 
community is apathetic or opposed and if all of the interest in 
bilingual education comes from the minority, bilingual education 
finds itself in a context of pressures, tensions, grievances, 
conflicts, and cleavages. Where conflict or divisiveness results, 
it is not the fault of bilingual education but of lack of 
appreciation for the diversity of the community and of the world. 
When bilingual education is given the community support, the 
diversity will be unifying and gratifying, not only cognitively, 
but emotionally and culturally as well. 
We may parallel an additive biculturalism to Lambert's additive 
bilingualism and stress that one's identity will not be lost by 
learning other cultures and languages (Triandis, 1976). Desirable 
Pluralism permits everyone to have additive multicultural 
experiences and switch from one cultural system to another and 
get a feeling of accomplishment. A balanced bilingual/bicultural 
person behaves in a way that is simply not available to 
monolingual/monocultural persons. But multiculturalism should not 
be limited to minority group members. Language maintenance is 
strongly related to the question whether the majority group will 
choose to learn the minority language and its culture or whether 
the minority group will be able to enforce its rights and 
aspirations through reinforcing its political position and 
community life. 
Bilingual education is an area which offers the researcher great 
scope for relevant and worthwhile work, but it is also an area 
that requires care and thoughtfulness that extends beyond a 
strictly scientific orientation. To conclude: we are aware that 
the "politicisation" of bilingualism/biculturalism and education 
is more attractive for those minority/migrant groups that still 
seek power and that those researchers that help them are 
promoting these movements into important political forces. 
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