Laying the Foundation for Literacy: An Anti-Bias Approach.

As a consequence of the large-scale population movement of the last 50 years, multilingual classrooms have become the norm in many cities throughout the English-speaking world and in continental Europe. In Canada, for example, 32 percent of the total population of 27 million report speaking a home language other than English or French (Statistics Canada, 1998). In the United States, a study based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey for March 1998 showed that immigrants accounted for 9.8 percent of the population. Half of all immigrants to the U.S. are Spanish-speaking, with 27 percent coming from Mexico alone ("Immigrant numbers in U.S. triple," 1999). Also, by the early 1990s, close to 200 different languages were spoken in the schools of London; Horvath and Vaughan (1991) document some 58 different community languages spoken in Australia (cited in Edwards & Corson, 1997).

These demographic changes have a significant effect on early childhood education programs. A link between home and school, early childhood programs play a critical role in the child's learning and socialization process. Garcia and McLaughlin (1995) emphasize that cultural and linguistic identities provide a strong and important sense of self and family belonging, which in turn supports a wide range of learning abilities, including literacy development. How can early childhood programs support the development of a strong self-identity and meet the diverse needs of multicultural children and their families? How can early childhood programs help maintain minority languages while also developing dominant language and literacy skills that will enable the child to be successful in the dominant society? The implementation of an anti-bias curriculum may be the key.

What Is Anti-Bias Curriculum?

Anti-bias education is based on Paulo Freire's "practice of freedom" notion, which is "the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world" (Freire, 1972, p. 15). Anti-bias education is value based, because it embraces an education philosophy as well as specific techniques and content. While supporting the notion of valuing differences, it sets up a creative tension between respecting differences and not accepting unfair beliefs and acts. It asks teachers and children to acknowledge "difference" as fundamental, and to confront troublesome issues rather than covering them up. It considers children's early attempts to construct identity and attitudes, directly addressing the effect of stereotypes, bias, and discrimination. The aim of anti-bias education is inclusion, positive self-esteem for all, and empathy and activism in the face of injustice.

Such an anti-bias perspective should be integral to all aspects of daily classroom life. Derman-Sparks (1989) suggests that the goals of anti-bias education at the early childhood level are to enable every child to:

* Construct a knowledgeable, confident self-identity

* Develop comfortable, empathic, and just interaction with diversity

* Develop critical thinking and the skills for standing up for oneself and others in the face of injustice.

Anti-bias curriculum aims at promoting a strong sense of pride in self and family, and a respect for other people as individuals and as members of social groups. It seeks to develop critical thinking skills that equip young children with the ability to explore, interpret, and question their own real-world setting. It tries to lay the foundations for the development of critical oracy and literacy (D. Corson, 1998).

Studies by Aboud (1988) and Katz (1983) demonstrate that even very young children are already aware that skin color, language, and gender differences are connected to privilege and power. They learn by observing the differences and similarities among people and by absorbing the spoken and unspoken messages about those differences. Derman-Sparks (1989) and P. Corson (1998) cite many examples of young children in child care settings making biased comments, including:

* A 4-year-old boy, wanting to take over the wheel of a pretend bus, tells the child already there, "Girls can't be bus drivers."

* Two 5-year-old white boys are playing in the sandbox. A Vietnamese boy asks to join them. "Nah, nah, you can't play with us, you Chinese," they chorus, pulling on their eyes to make them slant.

* A 5-year-old girl tells a Spanish-speaking child, "You're stupid. You can't talk properly."

All children are harmed in these situations, both the perpetrators and the victims. On the one hand, struggling against bias that declares a person inferior because of race, gender, or language undermines a child's full development. On the other hand, learning to believe they are superior because they are white or male or dominant language speakers distorts reality for children (Derman-Sparks, 1989).

An environment rich in possibilities for exploring diversity sets the scene for practicing anti-bias curriculum. Anti-bias classrooms are covered with the children's artwork, to show that they are valued and that their classroom is a place where the world of their families can be fully represented. Visual images that break down stereotypes about ethnicity, gender, physical abilities, or age are abundant. Play areas incorporate ethnically diverse "tools," utensils, and toys. Interactions with other children encourage problem-solving activities that value diversity and challenge unfair treatment. Every child's language is valued and parents are encouraged to maintain their first language in the home as much as possible. At the same time, dominant language skills are carefully nurtured, with full bilingualism and biliteracy the ultimate goal.

As in all education settings, the teacher is at the heart of this kind of curriculum. In a regular classroom, a teacher overhearing the comment, "You're stupid! You can't talk properly" might ignore the comment because of uncertainty about how to react. Or, the teacher might reprimand the child by telling her that what she said "wasn't nice." This approach, however, does not help the child understand why her response "wasn't nice," and the teacher loses a wonderful opportunity to expand the child's developing linguistic awareness. Furthermore, the Spanish-speaking child has not received an affirmation of her language, and so she is left wondering if she really is "stupid."

In contrast, a teacher in an anti-bias classroom would intervene and introduce both children to the idea that there are many different and interesting ways to talk. She might produce a range of books written in different languages, teach a new song in Spanish, or invite parents to the classroom to tell stories. She might encourage other children to teach each other words or phrases in different languages. On the door leading into the classroom, she might have a sign with "welcome" written on it in many languages. In this way, all the children may begin to appreciate linguistic diversity. At the same time, the Spanish-speaking child is recognized and valued for her difference.

An anti-bias environment is rich in oral language, as teachers and children learn to appreciate and respect differences, and to interact together to problem-solve ways of taking action against unfair behaviors that occur in their own lives.

Anti-Bias Education, Language, and Literacy

Culture and identity are intimately bound up with the language one speaks (Cazden, 1981; D. Corson, 1998; Cummins, 1996; Garcia & McLaughlin, 1995; Genesee, 1994; Nieto, 1996; Wong-Fillmore, 1991). One views the world, organizes experiences, and rationalizes and communicates one's thoughts through the language learned from earliest childhood. Culture and linguistic identities provide a strong and important sense of self and family belonging, which in turn supports a wide range of learning capabilities. For young children, the language of the home is the language they have used since birth, the language they use to make and establish meaningful communicative relationships, and the language they use to begin constructing their knowledge and testing out their learning.

Today, families and communities face increasingly complex responsibilities. Children once were cared for mostly by parents and family members who typically spoke the home language of their family, whether a dominant or a minority language, and who instilled in their children a strong sense of identity. With the increasing need for parents to work, however, more and more children are placed in the care of adults who may not speak the children's home language or share their cultural background. Studies carried out by Chang (1993) in California and Bernhard et al. (1996) in Ontario examined the linguistic mismatch between child care providers and the minority children in their care. Both studies found that very few caregivers either spoke the children's home languages or understood the value of nurturing the home language. The researchers concluded that the capacity for home language support was quite limited and that, as a result, minority children were disadvantaged cognitively, socially, and emotionally.

The early childhood community faces a tremendous challenge to provide programs that meet the needs of all children. An anti-bias curriculum accepts the legitimacy of children's home languages and acknowledges all attempts at communication, values the home culture, and promotes and encourages the active involvement and support of all families, including extended and non-traditional family units. An anti-bias classroom contains books in many languages with illustrations depicting many cultures, posters of different family compositions, samples of different scripts, and tapes of music and songs in many languages. Cummins (1986) maintains that educators who incorporate students' languages and cultures into the classroom enhance students' identities and lay strong foundations for the development of literacy and future academic success.

As a powerful example of all this, the Carpinteria experiment in California illustrates that the nurturing of the minority first language can facilitate the literacy acquisition of minority students in both English and their first language. Developed in the 1980s, this bilingual education preschool program aimed to empower language-minority Latino children and their families, both cognitively and psychologically, through the social and cultural context (Garcia & McLaughlin, 1995). Using a language experience approach, the experiment involved teaching Spanish exclusively to pre-kindergarten, Spanish-speaking children who came from low-income families, where the parents were mostly farm workers whose highest level of education, on average, was the 6th grade. The program allowed the children "the opportunity to develop their language skills in Spanish to as high a degree as possible within the structure of the preschool day" (Cummins, 1986, p. 31). By the time the children enrolled in kindergarten, they demonstrated a high degree of school readiness skills.

An even more powerful example is the highly successful minority language and culture immersion program in New Zealand, known as Te Kohanga Reo, which emphasizes the Maori language (D. Corson, 1998; May, 1994). This unique program was introduced in 1981 in response to concerns about ensuring the survival of the Maori language and culture. Many Maori children enter "kohanga reo" (language nests) in early infancy and continue until they start school. Te Kohanga Reo aims to re-create the atmosphere of a traditional Maori home. It has no formal structures except for opening prayers, regular meal breaks, and occasional ceremonies to greet guests. While the kohanga has no structured curriculum and little equipment, there is plenty of talking, singing, and movement. The children create their own games. They may stay close to adults if they choose to, because many adults take part in activities, interact with the children, and provide language and culture models.

The philosophy of Te Kohanga Reo--total immersion in the Maori language and culture--promotes learning in an appropriate cultural context, while drawing on Maori styles of learning and teaching. When the children move into the elementary school system, they are well on the way to active bilingualism and biculturalism, since they inevitably acquire English and the majority culture outside the language nests. May (1994) studied a school in Auckland where two language nests operated in the school's grounds. These language nests were based on two different Polynesian languages, and directed their graduates toward the elementary school program. May found that the children's success rate in English literacy, upon leaving the school, matched or surpassed the success rate of children attending regular schools without language nests.

Canadian authorities have responded in different ways to promote mother tongue maintenance and development for minority language children. In general, the responses are of two types: bilingual immersion education, which aims at maintaining the mother tongue and culture as much as possible; and heritage language programs, which aim at maintaining the child's cultural background to some extent, while still allowing quick transition to the dominant language. The literature seems to confirm the positive impact of bilingual experiences on school success. For example, francophone minority children in Ontario schools who receive most of their education in French tend to do much better in education than those submerged in English (Corson, 2000).

Yet, an anti-bias approach to the development of oral language skills does not always mean actual teaching of the minority language. Educators also use subtle means to communicate the validity and advantages of minority cultures and languages within the classroom context. When the home language is not validated by the school or child care setting, minority children gradually come to believe that their ways of using language are wrong. This belief not only lowers the children's self-esteem, but also may contribute to the eventual loss of the home language and culture. Teachers must demonstrate respect for children's language and culture, because these are essential parts of the child's identity.

In response to the growing body of research that stresses the connections among language, culture, and learning, anti-bias educators:

* Recognize that all children are cognitively, linguistically, and emotionally connected to the language and culture of their home

* Acknowledge that children can demonstrate their knowledge and capabilities in many ways

* Encourage minority first language and literacy work in the classroom so that children can make maximum use of their cultural resources

* Encourage and assist all parents in becoming knowledgeable about the cognitive value of children knowing more than one language

* Provide parents and caregivers with strategies to support, maintain, and preserve home language learning

* Work to counter stereotypes and biased attitudes toward minority language users.

Laying the Foundations for Literacy

In the last decade, we have learned much about the social and cultural dimensions of literacy. In defining literacy, for example, Hudelson (cited in Genesee, 1994) says,

I might define reading as a language process in which an individual constructs meaning through a transaction with written text that has been created by symbols that represent language. The transaction involves the reader's acting upon or interpreting the text, and the interpretation is influenced by the reader's past experiences, language background and cultural framework. (p. 130)

Young children come to early childhood programs with a background of language experiences, including everyday literacy knowledge such as print awareness, the ability to recognize written symbols, and many different prewriting efforts from their home and neighborhood environments. Thus, children who observe or participate in such family literacy events as storybook reading, grocery list making, filling in applications, Bible readings, playing computer games, or following directions are engaged in literacy development (Asselin, 1997).

Research on emergent literacy demonstrates that young children from a variety of backgrounds are engaged, from very early on in their lives, in making sense of the printed word, in figuring out the symbolic nature of print, and in discovering that print may serve a variety of functions. Children also are engaged in experimenting with that print, whether they are interpreting print written by someone else or creating their own written texts (Genesee, 1994). For example, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988) (cited in Kenner, 1999) recorded the writing of shopping lists, messages, cards, and letters within families in an urban New York neighborhood, and noted the keen interest of young children in all these activities. Czerniewska (1992) (also cited in Kenner, 1999) discusses the interest shown by children in texts ranging from maps to newspapers. Literacy acquisition, like oral language acquisition, is a profoundly social phenomenon. Children make sense of print in the environment because they encounter it as an integral part of everyday life; for example, ordering a hamburger, purchasing groceries, reading a storybook, and observing adults reading varied materials for varied purposes. Drawing on this kind of evidence, an anti-bias curriculum offers many opportunities for children to role-play everyday experiences, such as shopping; working in an office; writing letters; sharing stories; setting up play areas to represent restaurants, banks, stores, and cinemas; and so on. Everyday literacy materials are made available for children to use, and parents are encouraged to bring texts from home into the school and to write in different languages.

In an anti-bias environment where children can engage with everyday literacy materials and with texts brought from and modeled on those used at home, foundational knowledge about written language emerges. Children begin to develop their understandings about text, both in minority and other languages. They begin to read and to produce their own writing. In the rich oral environment that values each child's efforts to communicate, children from diverse backgrounds will develop a strong sense of self and be proud of their culture and language. In encouraging children to explore different ways of knowing and to develop critical thinking skills, an anti-bias curriculum lays strong foundations for the development of critical oracy and critical literacy.

References

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Patricia Corson

Patricia Corson is Assistant Professor, School of Early Childhood Education, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto.