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In every era in the history of U.S. public policies toward children, certain groups of children have been identified as being “at risk” and hence of social concern and responsibility. These groups consist of the physically handicapped and those with serious diseases; the emotionally disturbed; the mentally retarded; orphans; children whose mothers or fathers are permanently or temporarily absent; illegitimate, destitute, indigent, neglected, abused, and anti-social or delinquent children. Only very recently have the children belonging to specified ethnic, racial, and language groups been added as major “risk” categories and thus become a major focus of social concern and public responsibility. The source of the social concern about all the groups listed above is the alleged inability of the family (when it exists) to cope with the problems implied by membership in the group, or the public danger that follows from leaving these problems untreated. This social concern does not mean that American society has always accepted full responsibility for children in these risk categories. It has not always provided care, treatment, or rehabilitation, nor has it always sought to prevent their misfortunes. Since colonial times, however, it has at least shown concern for certain categories of children. My principal purpose in this monograph is to trace major trends in the evolution of those aspects of social policies toward children that bear directly on issues of ethnic, racial, and language diversity in our society. I also seek to examine the public attitudes, the intellectual assumptions, and the sociodemographic trends that have accompanied these policy developments. In addition, I pay some attention to the roles that the social and behavioral sciences have played with regard to such policies.

1. Bilingualism in the World The Extent of Bilingualism National Patterns of Bilingualism Language Policy and Linguistic Minorities The Origins of Bilingualism The Outcome of Bilingualism 2. Bilingualism in the United States Language Diversity and Bilingualism Aspects of the Life of Linguistic Minorities Bilingual Education Some Linguistic Minorities Language Maintenance and Language Shift 3. Bilingualism in Society Attitudes toward Language Groups and Languages Language Choice Code-Switching Bilingualism and Biculturalism 4. The Bilingual Child Becoming Bilingual The Acquisition of Two Languages Aspects of Bilingualism in the Child Education and the Bilingual Child The Effects of Bilingualism on the Child 5. The Bilingual Person Describing a Person's Bilingualism The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism The Bilingual Brain The Bilingual as a Person 6. Bilingual Speech and Language Speaking to a Monolingual Speaking to a Bilingual The Legacy of Bilingualism References Acknowledgments Index

with James Britton and others in the Institute's Writing Research Unit, which produced The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18) (1975), and for his contribution with Douglas Barnes to Language, the Learner and School (1969). In May 1981, Harold Rosen presented a keynote speech, "Language Diversity and the Linguistic Demands of the School" (published in the Fall 1981 issue of Highway One, Journal of Canadian Language Education) at the annual conference of the Canadian Teachers of English. This interview was conducted after his speech.

One of the most painful lessons mankind has learned since the rise of nationalism in the last hundred years is that language diversity fosters conflicts between states and among peoples living within one state but speaking different languages. Conversely, language uniformity makes for unity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most governments have strongly desired such uniformity. In some countries, as in America, assimilation into one language has been achieved by allowing national groups the free use of their native languages, and by relying upon the advance of education and of commercial and industrial development to break down the barriers those languages erect between various linguistic groups. In the period before the First World War, many governments sought language uniformity by forcibly repressing the languages of minorities, by Germanizing, Magyarizing, Russifying their national minority groups. Of no government was this more true than of that of the old Russian Empire, in which the “minorities” — that is, the groups other than the Great-Russians — constituted over half the population. But by attempting to suppress the languages of the Ukrainians, Georgians, Tatars and so on, the Tsarist regime did not achieve its goal of unity; rather, it aroused a host of nationalist movements which put language repression first on the bill of grievances against the government and which helped drive Tsarism to its death.