The Social Consequences of Chicano Home/School Bilingualism

Abstract

A review of the literature on the scholastic consequences of being bilingual suggests that the negative effects of Chicano home/school bilingualism stem from extrinsic factors, particularly the reactions of others to ethnic stigma, rather than from anything intrinsic to bilingualism, and that the effects vary by class and social context. Four models relating home/school bilingualism to subsequent attainments are presented and, contrary to expectations, a model of balanced effects, in which negative effects on educational attainment are cancelled out by the subsequent positive sociometric advantage of knowing Spanish, is best supported by recent data from Los Angeles. However, in middle-class Chicano homes the pattern of effects is reversed.