Parents, Personalities and Power , livre ebook

PARENTS, PERSONALITIES AND POWER
PARENTS, PERSONALITIES AND POWER
WELSH-MEDIUM SCHOOLS IN SOUTH-EASTWALES
Edited by Huw S. Thomas and Colin H.Williams
© The Contributors, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
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ISBN 978-0-7083-2584-1 e-ISBN 978-1-78316-035-8
The rights of The Contributors to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Dedicated to one man from amidst the countless thousands of individuals who have been, or still are, part of the ‘remarkable and spectacular’ success story analysed in this volume. The late Gwilym E. Humphreys (1931–2012), school teacher, college lecturer, headteacher of Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, HMI, Director of Education for Gwynedd, chairman of a range of educational and cultural groups, worked unstintingly for the promotion of Welsh-medium education of the highest order. The outstanding success of Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen under his leadership (1962–75), with its richly rounded education in the academic, cultural and sporting fields, inspired the foundation of many more Welsh-medium schools, and thus made a contribution of immense significance to reversing the language shift in Wales.
Contents


Foreword Colin Baker
Preface and acknowledgements Colin H. Williams
List of Maps and Tables
Maps showing location of Welsh-medium schools in south-east Wales
Notes on Contributors
Abbreviations
Glossary of terms
1 An Act of Faith Colin H. Williams
2 A Dynamic Profile Huw S. Thomas
3 The Shifting Impact of Language and Identity Huw S. Thomas
4 Understanding Power Huw S. Thomas
5 The Articulation of Power Huw S. Thomas
6 An Evolving Synergy Huw S. Thomas
7 Future Prospects for Welsh-medium Education: Reflections from a Recent Migrant David Hawker
8 Parent Power Michael L. N. Jones
9 Local Authorities and Welsh-medium Education Geraint Rees
10 School Reorganisation: A Lesson in How Not to Do It. The Case of Canton, Cardiff West Rhodri Morgan
11 The School Phenomenon: Encouraging Social Language Use Patterns in Welsh-medium Education Jeni Price
12 Transforming Strategies: Pathways to an Integral Education System Colin H. Williams and Meirion Prys Jones
Bibliography
Foreword
Colin Baker
Mae addysg cyfrwng Cymraeg yn arbennig is a statement often heard in connection with our experience. Yet is Welsh-medium education so special?
First, it cannot be claimed that Welsh-medium education is internationally special as minority language education, bilingual education, heritage language education, content and language integrated learning and immersion education are also found around the globe. Wales is not internationally different, as bilingual education has within a seventy-year period spread to most countries of the world.
Yet Welsh-medium education is internationally famed for its quality of education, its rapid and considerable spread in the last century, benefiting from the expertise of inspectors, pioneering headteachers and, not least, enthusiastic teachers and parents as advocates. Wales has an international reputation for successful bilingual education and for that education being a major ingredient in language revitalisation. Nevertheless, that success has developed in spite of the dearth of high-quality research and evaluation of Welsh-medium education.
Second, Welsh-medium education cannot claim to be special because it is internationally exclusive. There were early explorations of heritage-language education in Canadian education (e.g. Ukrainian and Hebrew), the United States (e.g. Yiddish and Native American Indian schools), Maori and Basque, Catalan and Irish. Particularly from the 1960s onwards, what Joshua Fishman calls the ‘ethnic revival’ and other elements such as language revitalisation enabled the rise of language minority education.
Yet modern Welsh-medium education is almost unique in that different models of bilingual education can be embedded in the same classroom. ‘Welsh-medium education’ contains within it much variety and we are special in successfully adapting and adjusting. For example, in contrast to the well-defined dual-language education in the United States and immersion education in Canada, Wales often combines different ‘models’ within one Welsh-medium classroom. For instance, a classroom may contain first-language Welsh-speaking children who follow a heritage-language approach whereby most of the curriculum is taught through the indigenous language. In addition, there are children from English-speaking homes experiencing immersion education whereby most of the curriculum is initially through Welsh. Recently, in a few Welsh-medium schools, the presence of children who speak first languages other than Welsh and English, requires additional consideration in terms of refugee education, asylum-seeker education and immigrant language support. Such children become fluent in both English and Welsh, and access the curriculum through English and Welsh. The result is that a modern teacher in Welsh-medium education is sometimes engaged in the language and curriculum development of children for whom English or Welsh or another language is dominant, with pressure for excellent curriculum outcomes as well as language competency outcomes.
Third, Welsh-medium education is not special in terms of being historic. Bilingual education goes back more than five thousand years to the Ancient World. In Luxembourg, bilingual education commenced in the 1840s and trilingual education in 1913. Although Wales is naturally proud of its history of Welsh-medium education, which is often dated back to 1939 for primary education and 1956 for secondary education, we do not have the longest history.
Yet Welsh-medium education is special because of the historic treasury of parents, personalities, power and politics that is so well represented in this book. What this collection reveals is that we are special in terms of grassroots movements as distinct from top-down language planning; there are special individuals who have made a unique contribution through ambition and vision, commitment and supervision. There is no understanding of Welsh-medium education except through politics and power, and through aspirations, assertiveness and ambition.
Welsh-medium education has been a foundational element in language planning and in fostering Welsh identity, a growing belief in self-government and self-regulation, and an ever-increasing self-respect among those whose forerunners had been disempowered by monolingual education, disadvantaged because their bilingualism was not celebrated and recognised and subjected to attacks on their self-esteem; they had experienced minimal self-regulation yet demonstrated maximal resilience.
The book portrays such paradoxes of Welsh education: sometimes special and definitely unique; once repressed but now resilient; powered by parents and personalities, yet surrounded by politics and power. The proud history of the movement has shaped a hope for the future in its contribution to language renewal, cultural diversity and, not least, the high-quality education of successive generations.
Welsh-medium education has a special place in Welsh-language history, hearts and hopes. ‘Mae gan addysg cyfrwng-Cymraeg le arbennig yn hanes yr iaith Gymraeg ac yng nghalonnau a gobeithion y Cymry . ’
Preface and acknowledgements
Colin H. Williams
I have previously described the growth of Welsh-medium education in Wales as one of the little miracles of post-Napoleonic Europe and as a gesture of faith that the world can be changed in some small, but significant, way. I am sure that many of the first generation of active promoters and parents for Welsh-medium education in the 1950s would be astonished at the subsequent growth in that sector that we have witnessed in the past generation. And yet, we cannot be fully confident that the merits of a Welsh-medium education and training are an undisputed shared value within contemporary Welsh society. There remains a constant need for evidence-based policy and innovative promotional work to sustain the message that quite distinct forms of value can be added to a person’s socialisation through the acquisition of two or more languages and the reproduction of the associated cultures.
To that end the Language, Policy and Planning Research Unit, School of Welsh at Cardiff University was established to analyse and scrutinise developments in contemporary Welsh society within an international comparative context. The LPPRU has a long-standing interest in language policy and planning and in aspects of education practice and policy. In the past we have dealt with issues of bilingual education, second language acquisition, investigations into the needs of the Welsh for Adults sector and the potential for improving the adoption of Welsh as a language for instruction in a number of disciplines within the University sector.
This current volume is derived from a sustained research investigation of the development of Welsh-medium education in south-east Wales. Previous publications derived from the project have tended to be