Tongue-Tied

The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education

Edited by Otto Santa Ana

Publication date:

12 March 2004

Length of book:

336 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742523838

Tongue-Tied is an anthology that gives voice to millions of people who, on a daily basis, are denied the opportunity to speak in their own language. First-person accounts by Amy Tan, Sherman Alexie, bell hooks, Richard Rodriguez, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other authors open windows into the lives of linguistic minority students and their experience in coping in school and beyond. Selections from these writers are presented along with accessible, abridged scholarly articles that assess the impact of language policies on the experiences and life opportunities of minority-language students. Vivid and unforgettable, the readings in Tongue-Tied are ideal for teaching and learning about American education and for spurring informed debate about the many factors that affect students and their lives.

Chapter 1 Foreword
Chapter 2 Student Preface
Chapter 3 Introduction: The Unspoken Issue That Silences Americans
Part 4 I The Child's Struggle against Silencing
Chapter 5 "Cut into Me"
Chapter 6 "The Girl Who Wouldn't Sing"
Chapter 7 "Prospectus"
Chapter 8 "Learning Silence"
Chapter 9 From Always Running
Chapter 10 From Lost in Translation
Chapter 11 "Name Giveaway"
Chapter 12 "Masks and Acculturation"
Chapter 13 "Aria"
Chapter 14 "Language and Consciousness"
Chapter 15 "Back in Those Days"
Chapter 16 "Indian Boy Love Song (#2)"
Chapter 17 "Wasicuia ya he? Do you speak English?"
Chapter 18 "Off Reservation Blues"
Chapter 19 "¿Qué dice? ¿Qué dice? Child Translators and the Power of Language"
Chapter 20 "No Questions Asked"
Chapter 21 "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
Chapter 22 "The Silence of Polyglots"
Chapter 23 From "voz en una cárcel"
Chapter 24 From The Woman Warrior
Part 25 II The History of Silencing Children
Chapter 26 Chronology of Events, Court Decisions, and Legislation Affecting Language Minority Children in American Public Education
Part 27 III The Potential and Vulnerability of Multilingual Children
Chapter 28 "The Failure to Educate Immigrant Children"
Chapter 29 From 36 Children
Chapter 30 "Today's Deficit Thinking about the Education of Minority Students"
Chapter 31 "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence"
Chapter 32 "Beginning Where the Children Are"
Chapter 33 From "Translating Translation: Finding the Beginning"
Part 34 IV Mother Tongue
Chapter 35 "Elena"
Chapter 36 From Healing Earthquakes
Chapter 37 "Mother Tongue"
Chapter 38 "Lakota Words"
Chapter 39 "Immigrants"
Chapter 40 "My Hawai'i"
Chapter 41 "Chief Wachuseh"
Chapter 42 "Translation"
Chapter 43 "Bilingual Cognates"
Chapter 44 "Learning to Trust the Language I Thought I'd Left Behind"
Part 45 V Excellence and Neglect in the Schooling of Multilingual Children
Chapter 46 "Principles of Successful Schools for Multilingual Children"
Chapter 47 "The Best Multilingual Schools"
Chapter 48 "The Four Spokes of the Second Language Learning Wheel"
Chapter 49 "Teaching Multilingual Children"
Chapter 50 "Suite for Ebony and Phonics: Reflections on African American English"
Chapter 51 "What Should Teachers Do about Ebonics?"
Part 52 VI Rage, Regret, and Resistance
Chapter 53 "I Want to Write an American Poem II"
Chapter 54 "Teaching New Worlds/New Words"
Chapter 55 "Desmet, Idaho, March 1969"
Chapter 56 "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers"
Chapter 57 "Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart"
Chapter 58 "Mi Problema"
Chapter 59 "Linguistic Terrorism"
Chapter 60 "I Recognize You"
Chapter 61 "The New World"
Chapter 62 "I Want to Write an American Poem III"
Chapter 63 "Speaking Spanglish"
Chapter 64 "English con Salsa"

Tongue-Tied is indeed a powerful metaphor for the impact on students of deficit ideologies related to language differences, one that every educator needs to consider. Santa Ana's compilation makes an important contribution to the discussion about diversity and education.