should immigrants be encouraged to use their mother tongue?

It has become a very politically-loaded question to ask if immigrant children should be allowed to use their mother tongue in class.

Even more so would be the question of whether immigrant children and their families should be actively encouraged to use their mother tongue.

Firstly, there is the question of whether immigrants should be taught in their mother tongue at schools

"I think there are different reasons that may explain this paradigm. The first is the notion one nation, one language, which is an old idea" affirms Dr. Ellen-Rose Kambel, Executive Director of Rutu Foundation. "Moreover, there is a general lack of awareness and information about the damage that could be done to children when their mother tongue is not valued, and also a lack of information on what teachers can do to develop a multilingual approach".

Allowing children to communicate in their home languages in school strengthens their cognitive and social skills. Not only does this improve pupils' skills in the school language, but research shows that they are likely to have better critical thinking and problem solving skills, and have greater cultural awareness. The translanguaging method can be applied to both newly arrived and second generation children...

Indeed research shows that training in mother tongue strengthens the linguistic and academic development of the bilingual child as well as the development of a secure identity. The role of families and education of parents is also vital: parents who speak the instruction language fluently are able to help their children far more effectively than parents with a limited knowledge of the language.

Last but not least, the policy of ignoring mother tongue teaching for migrant children is not only in contradiction with research evidence but also with UNESCO's globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The respect of children's cultural identity is set within the international policy framework and according to UNESCO, "equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all is only possible when education responds to and reflects the multilingual nature of the society. Children, adolescents and adults require learning opportunities that are relevant to their lives and needs, in and through their own languages. Since SDG 4 is so foundational to the other Sustainable Development Goals, without mother tongue-based multilingual education the other 16 goals will remain unachievable" (UNESCO 2017).

Secondly, there is the notion that we should preserve immigrants' native language and cultural identity in multilingual and multicultural societies - which is what many countries are or have become:

Preserving cultural heritage alive is a daily celebration in our house, but it doesn’t feel like a chore or something that we have to actively work at doing. It is truthfully second nature in our household because we live and breathe it every day through food, music, storytelling, and the way we talk (I speak home language with my family and as much as I can to our kids, plus my husband uses Trinidadian dialect and slang with his family that the kids also hear). Our children are lucky to have older relatives in their lives still from both my husband and my side of the family to talk to and spend time with periodically. Preserving our cultural and family heritage is important to us and so far, it seems to be important to our children as well because they are often asking us questions about the past and our family relatives. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Thirdly, we can look at whether first-language training matters for immigrant children’s school achievements:

Immigrant children fall behind their native peers in terms of educational attainment in many Western European countries. Policies with the aim of closing this immigrant-native educational gap are often implemented, however, more rarely evaluated (Paola & Brunello 2016). One such measure is first-language training for immigrant children that has been a source of much debate among policymakers in the Nordic countries. Advocates of this education argue that mother-tongue proficiency contributes to immigrant children’s academic achievements in general and that it helps with learning the host-country language in particular. Opponents have instead emphasised the importance of focusing on the host-country language in schools and that teaching should be conducted in this language only...

Increasing educational attainment of first- and second-generation immigrants is important because they are falling behind in the Danish labour market. This is particularly true for individuals originating from countries other than countries of the EES and the EU. The political aim of the policy reform introduced in 2002 was to increase the assimilation of these groups and by removing mother-tongue training, it was believed that immigrant children would increase their proficiency in Danish, which would, in turn, increase labour market integration. This study shows that such positive effects of the reform are not found. Rather the opposite has occurred; the removal of mother-tongue training leads to lower grades in Danish for boys and in mathematics for boys in general, and boys and girls belonging to the second generation. Although effects are modest, this study provides evidence that mother-tongue education matters for the educational achievement of children with a background in countries other than the EU and the EES. If the motivation of Danish educational policies directed towards first- and second-generation immigrants is to enhance immigrant integration, the removal of mother-tongue education should be reconsidered.

Fourthly, there is the question of how effective bilingual development in children of immigrant families is:

Early exposure to two languages is widely thought to guarantee successful bilingual development. Contradicting that belief, children in bilingual immigrant families who grow up hearing a heritage language and a majority language from birth often reach school age with low levels of skill in both languages. This outcome cannot be explained fully by influences of socioeconomic status. In this article, I summarize research that helps explain the trajectories of observed dual language growth among children in immigrant families in terms of the amount and quality of their language exposure as well as their own language use...

Evidence of the factors that impede optimal bilingual development in children from immigrant families can inform efforts to support successful bilingual outcomes in these children. Such support is important: Children from immigrant families need strong skills in the majority language to succeed in school (48, 49), and they need skills in the heritage language to communicate well with their parents and grandparents (50). Furthermore, bilingualism is an asset for interpersonal, occupational, and cognitive reasons (25). Children who hear two languages from birth can become bilingual, even if that outcome is not guaranteed. The findings I have discussed suggest that bilingual development is supported when children are exposed to both languages in ways that do not diminish the amount of exposure to each more than is necessary. In addition, to support bilingual development fully, children’s exposure to each language should come from highly proficient speakers, children’s heritage languages should be valued by society, and children should be given opportunities that encourage them to use both languages.

Finally, there is the question of how literacy is essential to refugees and migrants to rebuilding their lives in the language of their new country - and whether we should use mother tongue reading materials as a bridge to literacy. So, should we be developing a mother tongue program with standards and community resources?

Every bilingual student has a story to tell about language, culture, and identity. As a child growing up in New Jersey, my non-English speaking stay-at-home mom was communicating in her mother tongue--Italian--the only language she knew at the time. My father, on the other hand, was speaking to his five children in broken English while he was learning English through immersion on the job.

Though both of my parents were college educated, my dad having a PhD in Chemistry and my mom with an undergraduate degree, they still did not have a strong idea of how to raise literate children in a foreign country. In our home, my father did not want us using Italian--nor eating too much garlic--because in 1960's America, an Italian immigrant wanted to integrate as quickly as possible. Identifying with the American culture and language, my father thought, was the quickest way we as family would develop the one language that counted: English. The worst misconception about language that my father had was that speaking only in English to his children would improve our academic language at school as young children. This is unfortunately a common fallacy among immigrants that minority languages do not count and “privileged languages”--national languages-- must be learned at all costs, even at the cost of losing a home language.

Thanks to my mother, I grew up speaking, reading, and writing in Italian at home along with my siblings. I would speak with my mom daily in Italian, as well as enjoy tutorials from her in reading and writing over time. It was there that developing a richer academic language in English began as I transferred skills from my home language to the school language through my mother's attempts at maintaining our heritage language at home.

Ultimately, though we surely need to challenge the idea that a migrant's mother tongue is a language with no value:

Europe places a high value on multilingualism and language diversity, but the emphasis remains more on European languages than on the languages spoken by many newly-arrived migrants. The use of other languages is often seen as a barrier to integration. Clear evidence however shows that supporting and preserving migrants’ mother tongues has benefits for the whole of society...

Whereas multilingualism, and in particular the teaching of mother tongue languages is promoted at an official European level, the reality in many European schools is different. The majority of publically-funded schools in Europe take a monolingual approach in the classroom, a report released in January by the European Commission's education information network showed. Only a few countries (in 2017, six countries) offer tuition in the languages of newly-arrived migrants or a form of bilingual teaching in class.

One country that has tried to offer support for mother tongue languages in schools is Sweden, where the right to Mother Tongue Tuition is governed by legislation. The aim is that children are given support to develop both the Swedish language and their own mother tongue from pre-school onwards...

Many studies have shown that bilingualism or multilingualism in general, regardless of what the languages are, enhances cognitive ability, improving concentration and focus, memory, attention and control.

Research has also shown that supporting children in their mother tongue improves their results in other subjects. And even though some still insist on an "either-or" approach, evidence shows that tuition in the mother tongue makes it easier, not harder, to learn the host-country language...

Deema speaks Arabic at home, and once a week she goes to Arabic class. In North Rhine-Westphalia, children at primary and lower secondary levels who like her are growing up bilingual are offered extra classes in at least 15 home languages. The majority are European languages, plus Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish and Turkish.

But a large number of schools in Germany and Europe don't provide this level of support for mother tongue languages. "I think it's a sort of waste," von Dewitz says. "It would be much more helpful to see every student with all his or her languages, meaning that even if you may not have a very high proficiency in German yet, it doesn't mean that you don't speak a language. Of course you do."

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