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Language Rights and Bilingual Education

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Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Introduction

To what extent are indigenous and minority children guaranteed a right to learn both their own languages and at least a/the dominant language in the country where they live, up to a high formal level, through bilingual education of various kinds, most importantly including a right to mother tongue medium (MTM) maintenance education (see Skutnabb‐Kangas and McCarty, Key Concepts in Bilingual Education: Ideological, Historical, Epistemological, and Empirical Foundations, Volume 5, for definitions)? Do all children have the right to access high quality education, regardless of what their mother tongue is? Do schools support indigenous/minority communities’ right to reproduce themselves as indigenous peoples/minorities (hereafter LMs, Linguistic Minorities) through enabling and encouraging intergenerational transfer of their languages? In other words, do indigenous and minority children enjoy linguistic human rights (LHRs) in education?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Languages and Culture, University of Roskilde, Roskilde, Denmark

    Tove Skutnabb‐Kangas

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  1. Tove Skutnabb‐Kangas
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6216, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Nancy H. Hornberger

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Skutnabb‐Kangas, T. (2008). Language Rights and Bilingual Education. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_120

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_120

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

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