Advanced Essay #2: Language in furthering cultural literacy

Advanced Essay

I entered my kindergarten classroom literate in English, and left literate in two languages. This was a phenomenon I couldn’t fully process as a five year old. My brain swirled in circles, as a child does, and learning two languages at once just became custom. I started by learning Spanish the way I had learned English years before, Maestra Maricarmen would point to a grape and we would all respond in unison, “uva.” I spoke Spanish all day long, to the point where it felt weird when I would go home and have to speak English. I ate dinner and went to bed like the usual kindergartener, with the thoughts off all of the things I had learned and had yet to learn. My eyes slowly started to drift into dreamland. My mind began to swirl into a scene where I was doing my homework and my mom was standing above me. She was speaking and speaking in a way I had never realized her do before.

“¿Qué dice la pregunta 5? Creo que la maestra equivocó.”

Through my dream I slowly started to realize what was off, my dream was in Spanish. My body jerked up in shock. What just happened? The sun was slowly rising through the shades on my window. I could feel my eyes droop back into dreamland and I fell back asleep.

As my literacy in two languages was growing, I realized parts of my learning experience that were changing. I was becoming more culturally aware solely through the ability to communicate with others and connect through a common factor. When we went to the Mexican market on the corner, me, the 7-year-old, was the one who would talk to the owner. When I read books, I was able to read about Latin American culture in the language they speak. When I went to class, I was able to communicate with students who didn’t speak any Spanish. When I travelled with my family, I was the one who got us around. These experiences made me realize this great power that I possessed. It was an ability to communicate with others who had very different backgrounds than myself.  

Sixth grade began with a huge influx of new students, most of whom were Mexican immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia a few months before. One of these students, Brenda, was seated right next to me in Maestra Antonia’s class. I looked to her and asked, “¿Hola, cómo estás?” She looked at me with a smile and responded, “Bien, eres la primera Americana que ha hablado en Español a mi.” In translation she was saying that I was the first American who had spoken in Spanish to her. Over the years she would always look at me during class and smile, realizing she was in a community that accepted her culture. The school was full of diversity in language, and we were all learning more Spanish together. This power of multiple literacies helped with the ability to communicate with people comfortably in their own language, instead of the much too common story of other language speakers having to adapt to English for the comfort of others.

The immersion school environment that I had become used to and loved went completely against the idea that “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong” (Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, 34). Culture and language was celebrated in every course. The ideology was led through further understanding from communication and adaptation.

People are so often limited to their world by the language they speak. They lack perspective on culture because of the vast majority of people they can’t communicate with. This creates ignorant conflict of the oppressor versus the one being oppressed by the lack of ability to express their full culture. This comes into play in the oppressive manner that America treats language and diversity, where it backplays in the constitution itself, “Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment” (Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue, 34).

Other countries treat bilingual education as a vital element in the education system where kids leave bilingual or even trilingual. The American school system sees literacy in two languages as a waste of resources and laughs at that vital element. In result, children aren’t given enough language courses, of which are treated as extra instead of a main course. This limits the ability of students to acknowledge changing diversity and see the broad places that the world has to offer, because of the lack of a diversity in literacy. This in turn changes the way that students of diverse backgrounds are treated, their languages are seen as less and a waste of time to deal with. Those students are treated as dumb and not brought to their full potential because of the way the school system places them in a, “dumping ground for the disaffected” (Rose, I Just Wanna Be Average, 2). Diverse versions of literacy create a more culturally literate and accepting society.

Works Cited

Rose, Mike. “I Just Want to be Average .” Google Drive, Google,   drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Cvq7ioloJpN2JmMDk3ZWQtYmI5OS00OTM3LTk5MDctZWMzZTViNGVhNjBi/view.