Multilingual Education Essay

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In Mohanty, A.K., Panda, M., Phillipson, R. and Skutnabb-Kangas, T. eds. 2009. Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalizing the Local. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, pp. 268-77. Multilinguality and a New World Order* R K Agnihotri, University of Delhi, Delhi Introduction Given the facts of the matter about large-scale linguistic genocide and attendant loss of cultural, educational and socio-economic space and human dignity (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Crystal 2000, Nettle and Romaine 2000, Tollefson and Tsui 2004, Andres-Baer 2008 among others) and about English imperialism and attendant economic and cultural exploitation (Ram 1983, Viswanathan 1989, Suleri 1992, Phillipson 1992, Niranjana 1993, Trivedi 1993, Pennycook 1994, Agnihotri and Khanna 1997 among others), we need to work towards a more just world order that is marked by equity and democracy. We need to formulate an alternative view of 'language' and 'multilinguality' in both theory and practice as well as at least begin to conceptualise a new world order. So far the interface between language/ multilinguality and the new social order is concerned, there is hope primarily for three reasons: English can survive more constructively in the implementation of 'multilinguality' as proposed in this paper and there is no reason to believe that what could happen to Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, Persian etc will not happen to English; secondly, technology which was hitherto almost exclusively exploited by English is increasingly accessible to other languages and finally it does seem possible to examine multilinguality as a site that would not only help fight highly dangerous sociolinguistic stereotypes but will also promote divergent thinking, higher levels of linguistic and scholastic achievement, cognitive flexibility and most of all social tolerance (Cummins and Swain 1986, Mohanty 1994
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