Contact: Michele Forsten/718-488-1015/[email protected]
Brooklyn, NY--While bilingual education in the United States is usually seen as a remedial program to teach students English, in other countries it is hailed as an enrichment program that trains people to be truly bilingual.
A July 12-16 symposium at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus, the first of its scope to be conducted anywhere in the world, will focus on what's right about bilingual education, bringing together internationally-renowned experts from the European Union, the Middle East, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Africa and the United States.
The week-long event, "Bilingualism and Biliteracy Through Schooling: An International Symposium," will be attended by education policy-makers and officials, school leaders, teachers and scholars. Topics addressed will include: o The Impact of Proposition 227 on the Use of Native Languages in California Schools o The Role of Bilingual Education in the Revitalization of the Maori Language in New Zealand o Secular Yiddish Schools in America o Bilingual Policy Change in Hong Kong and Its Impact on Bilingual Ed o The Role of Bilingualism and Biliteracy in Maintaining and Creating Community
Each day of the conference will cover bilingual schooling in different geo-graphical areas: July 12: the world; July 13: Europe, Australia and New Zealand; July 14: Israel, Asia and Africa; July 15: the Americas; and July 16: the United States. "Bilingual Education is often misunderstood as an ethnic, political matter," says Ofelia Garcia, dean of the School of Education at LIU's Brooklyn Campus and chair of the symposium. "It goes way beyond being a Latino remediation issue; we're talking about a respected field of study that is global in scope.
"We are coming together to explore how language is important for identity and for global communication--this is also what Bilingual Education is about," she adds. "Different ways to teach a second language and how to teach languages that are disappearing or have been lost--such as Yiddish, Maori (New Zealand), Basque (Spain) and Frisian (The Netherlands)--also are part of the discussion."
With an expertise in the fields of sociolinguistics and bilingual education, Garcia has had a distinguished career committed to the practice of teaching and the education of teachers in urban communities. Editor of six books, her most recent, The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City (co-edited with sociolinguist Joshua Fishman), was published by Mouton (1997). Garcia is the editor of a new journal, Educators for Urban Minorities, published by Long Island University. She came to LIU in 1997 from City College (CCNY), where she was director of the bilingual education program.
The Long Island University bilingual symposium, which may be taken for three graduate credits, is being sponsored by the Campus's School of Education in collaboration with the National Association for Bilingual Education, the New York State Education Department's Office of Bilingual Education, the New York City Board of Education's Office of Bilingual Education, and the Eastern Suffolk BOCES.
For more information, including details about the registration fee, contact: Anthony Cirincione, LIU/Brooklyn Campus, at 718-488-1010. The campus is located at the intersection of DeKalb and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn.
Long Island University has been training state and national leaders in the field of education since the 1930s. The Brooklyn Campus offers a BS degree in elementary education, secondary education, physical education and bilingual special education. On the graduate level, it offers an MS.Ed in elementary and secondary education, special education, bilingual education, teaching English as a second language, reading teacher, school counselor or school psychologist; the MS in computers in education and in counseling; a professional diploma in school administration/school district administration; and advanced certificates in family counseling, alcoholism counseling and bilingual education.
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