About this Research Topic

Background

The South African Department of Basic Education has recently proposed the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (B2-2022), commonly known as the BELA Bill. The Bill is meant to amend the South African Schools Act of 1996, and provides “that the governing body of a public school must submit the admission and language policies of the public school to the Head of Department [of the Department of Basic Education] for approval; […] that the South African Sign Language has the status of an official language for purposes of learning at a public school and that the Head of Department may direct a public school to adopt more than one language of instruction, where it is practicable to do so, and that, if the Head of Department issues such a directive, he or she must take all necessary steps to ensure that the public school receives the necessary resources to enable it to provide adequate tuition in the additional language of instruction.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA) claims that the Bill is attacking mother tongue education in South African schools. Other criticisms against the Bill are that it will give the minister and the head of the Basic Education Department extraordinary powers to override school governing bodies, that the government will take over schools and their language policy, and that the government will ultimately decide what language is taught in schools. The government has come forward in defense of the policy, arguing that the DA is only trying to racialize the Bill and maintain the dominant status of English and Afrikaans in schools. It argues that the Bill’s language clauses push for a multilingual approach, which will lead to public schools having more than one language of instruction.

Against this backdrop, this Research Topic seeks to address the issue of the centralization and racialization of language policy and the implications for the 'below' in multilingual contexts across the world. We believe that in many multilingual communities across the world there are political battles and contestations over language policies in the education sector. These battles and contestations for linguistic power affect those who are 'below.' The 'below' here denotes learners, teachers, school executives, and school governing bodies. Alexander (1992) warned against centralizing language planning and policies. He argued in favor of non-governmental organizations such as language associations, community organizations, and other language stakeholders taking charge of executing language planning activities (Beukes, 2008). Schmidt (2002) argued that in instances where English remains a dominant language, language ideologies are sometimes used to score racial points, by keeping other linguistic groups excluded from the country’s civil society and public domains. Today, we see these two issues emerging with the proposed BELA Bill in South Africa.

With this article collection, our aim is to interrogate the implications of centralizing language policies at the government level and using language policy to intervene in racial discourses in multilingual contexts. We welcome manuscripts that use theoretical approaches and case study analysis to explore the implications of these issues on learners, teachers, schools, and school governing bodies across the world. The Research Topic seeks to critique the potential problems and ambivalences of what happens when language policies in basic education are centralized and racialized.

The Research Topic welcomes contributions that take both theoretical approaches and case study analysis approaches ranging from sociolinguistics, political theory, language policy and planning, basic education, governance, and race theory. We seek to encourage a cross-cultural dialogue which can link language usage in schools to sociology, race, politics, and governance in multilingual contexts. The Topic seeks to generate submissions from scholars across the globe who are working within the interstices of language policy and basic education.

Topics to consider may include, but are not limited to:

• language attitudes
• language and race
• monolingual practices
• language and culture
• language policy and decolonization
• language and separate development
• language and marketability.

Keywords: Language policy, racism, BELA BILL, basic education, multilingualism

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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