After our discussions on immigrants in both the United States and in Europe, I decided to take a quick look for research on Turkish immigrants in Germany. I came across a dissertation entitled “Turkish Language Provisions in Berlin” by Lucy Hottman from the University of Manchester. Hottman states in her abstract that she looked beyond the Turkish community to the Berlin public sector to ascertain if Turkish, and therefore multilingualism, was institutionally promoted in Germany. Her conclusion?

“The observations reveal a clear lack of any linguistic policy at state or federal level other than that of ignoring languages other than German. A host of provisions can be observed but these are rather random measures often initiated by individuals. They are not aimed at promoting multilingualism but rather at facilitating communication for citizens who do not speak German. Furthermore minimal provisions in the area of education appear to be more decorative than substantial. Clearly Berlin's increasing multilingualism is not recognised as something to be protected. On the contrary, in spite of the fact that Germany is obviously an immigration nation, public services reflect the still prevalent monolingual ideology: In Germany we speak German” (Hottman 7).

http://languagecontact.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/McrLC/casestudies/LH.html.

Accessed March 20th, 2011

This echoes the article about whether the U.S. has a language policy, or just civil rights. Essentially, even in the U.S. we don’t have an official policy, and even the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 (and now expired) was instituted “to teach English to children from non-English speaking backgrounds” (Spolsky 100). Thus, in Germany and the U.S., German and English respectively are seen as the languages of success, and while both are multicultural states, the unofficial policy is assimilation through lack of support for foreign/migrant language teaching.

This brings us back to the question of whether or not the state has a responsibility to provide bilingual education. Another complication is at what level? Education in both German and the United States is under jurisdiction of the states. Should the United States and Germany issue federal policies on bilingual education? What would be the pros and cons of such a policy?