Ousted and muted: the evolution and current institutional and social support of Chinese Heritage Language education policies and practices in British Columbia

Abstract

AbstractWith this paper, I explore societal and institutional support for Chinese Heritage Language (HL) education through specific HL policies and practices in British Columbia (BC). Framed by power relations and societal attitudes, the paper intends to contextualize historical and contemporary marginalization enacted through HL-related legislatives, education, immigration policies, and language programs, to illuminate the current state of institutional support (or lack thereof) for Chinese HL education. This paper raises the fundamental question of whether the related policies and practices serve to foster or hinder Heritage Language retention for ethnic-Chinese immigrant youth within public education settings. I argue that, despite ethnic-Chinese contributions throughout history; BC’s discriminatory history toward Chinese; numerous studies suggesting the benefits of multilingualism (Cummins in J Curric Stud 24(3):281–286, 1992a, in Richard-Amato PA, Show MA (eds) The multicultural classroom: readings for content-area teachers. Longman, New York, pp 16–26, b; Duff and Li in Curdt-Christiansen XL, Hancock A (eds) Learning Chinese in diaspora communities: many pathways in being Chinese. John Benjamins, Amsterdam pp 219–238, 2014; Hua and Costigan in J Youth Adolesc 41:894–906, 2012; Guardado in Can Mod Lang Rev 58(3):341–363, 2002; Kondo-Brown in Kondo-Brown K (ed) Heritage Language development: focus on East Asian immigrants. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 243–258, 2006; Kondo-Brown and Brown in Teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean heritage language students: curriculum needs, materials, and assessment. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New York, 2008; Tse in Harv Educ Rev 71(4):676–706, 2001); persistent Heritage Language advocacy efforts by ethnic-Chinese parents (Mizuta in Memories of language lost and learned: Parents and the shaping of Chinese as a heritage language in Canada. Doctoral dissertation. University of British Columbia, 2016); and strong evidence of severe HL loss across generations (Wong Fillmore in Early Child Res Q 6:323–346, 1991), there continues to be a deficiency in institutional support for ethnic-Chinese students’ HL education in contemporary BC.\n