My first year of kindergarten was defined by the sharp difference between my experience at home and in the classroom. At home and with my caregivers, I was a chatterbox. But my classroom wasn’t a space where I could openly share about my weekends or my obsession with the Mario Party video game, because during the first five years of my life, Spanish was all I knew. The classroom felt foreign because English was the predominant language, and the use of my native language was discouraged.
Even though my parents had immigrated to the United States, I felt strongly connected to my Honduran heritage because Spanish was a bridge to exploring the different facets of our culture and history from afar. Yet, throughout the course of my elementary education, even while attending majority Latine schools, my peers and I were immersed in an environment that didn’t accommodate for our home languages. While linguistics research suggests that language impacts the way we see and experience the world, the United States, despite lacking an official language, has boxed itself in by situating English as the language of power and prestige.
The suppression of linguistic diversity is a deeply rooted practice in the United States—from colonial times, when European enclaves were discouraged from using their mother tongues, to the ongoing repression of Native American languages and cultures, and even today, with Proposition 203 in Arizona being used to attack dual language learning (DLL) programs across the state. These are just a few examples of the countless times when racist ideology has positioned English proficiency not only as a measure of intelligence and academic achievement, but also as a defining characteristic of American identity. For the 27% of children under 6 who have at least one parent who speaks another language, English-only pedagogy can perpetuate a negative perception of the mother tongue, facilitating a detrimental language loss, creating unsupportive learning environments, and deterring children from connecting with their heritage.