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Biographical information

Ofelia García has had a distinguished academic career committed to the practice of teaching and the education of teachers in urban communities, especially of bilingual teachers. Presently she is Professor of bilingual education at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies. She is also co-director of the Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies. Prior to joining Teachers College, she was Dean of the School of Education in the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University where with a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, she founded the Center for Urban Educators in September 2000. García is co-editor of Spanish in Context and editor of Educators for Urban Minorities. From 1981 to 1997, she was professor of education at The City College of New York. Among her books are--The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City,co-edited with distinguished sociolinguist Joshua Fishman,(Mouton, 2nd edition 2001), Policy and Practice in Bilingual Education: Extending the Foundations (Multilingual Matters, 1995); English Across Cultures: Cultures Across English, A Reader in Cross-Cultural Communication (Mouton, 1989); U.S.Spanish: The Language of Latinos (Mouton, 1989). In addition, she has published more than 50 academic articles in the areas of bilingualism, sociology of language, U.S. Spanish, the education of language minorities and bilingual education. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidad de la República, Montevideo (1996) and a Spencer Fellow of the National Academy of Education (1985-88). She is also a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and is on the advisory board of Second Language Instruction/Acquisition Abstracts.

Abstract

The Americas in the 21st century have been characterized by their growing multilingualism and above all by the Spanish/ English bilingualism of the Spanish speakers who come and go and bring and take. This sociolinguistic situation of today bears little resemblance to the Americas of the 20th century about which Sarmiento said "In the north, English is spoken, and in the south Spanish is spoken." This paper outlines the sociolinguistic situation of the Americas from the 20th century to the present day and emphasizes the different linguistic policies. We will analyze in some detail the current situation where the speed and efficacy of the systems of communication and transportation have generated the possibility of not only linking the Anglo-Saxon America with the Iberian America, but also cities with rural areas, the mountains and coasts, the Southern Cone and the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Atlantic, the South-West of the United States with the North-West. In spite of the increased links and convergence, the different sociolinguistic positions in the US Anglo-Saxon world and the different Latin American nations have different effects on the geostrategies that are used today to face the growing multilingualism. We will compare then, the Anglo-Saxon linguistic ecosystem with that of Latin America, pointing out the different philosophical orientations, reactions, and raisons d'être. We will conclude by paying particular attention to the educational context, a crucial medium for the bilingualism of a people. We will share the lessons learnt in the years of bilingual education in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. But above all, we will concentrate of the need for Latin American countries to walk down their own path in relation to bilingual and multilingual education, taking into account their economic, social and human possibilities.