{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02597864768683274, 'fraction_numerical': 0.008540925266903915, 'mean_word_length': 5.5524475524475525, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective

In Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective, Ofelia Garcı́a construes the complexity of bilingual education through a recurring analogy of the banyan tree, coherently woven throughout the book’s five main parts. It is an image that captures the myriad of contextual variables and choices involved in bilingualism and bilingual education and allows for ‘growth in different directions at the same time [while] grounded in the diverse social realities from which it emerges’ (17). As this analogy portrays, bilingual education is multi-faceted in its complexity since historical, linguistic, cultural, political, and social realities must be taken into account to begin any useful discussion. To guide readers, Garcı́a initially explores language, and most importantly, bilingualism, on an individual and societal level. She continues with a comprehensive overview of the various frameworks, models, variables, and program types in bilingual education as practiced in schools and communities all over the world. Bilingual education policies, practices, pedagogies, and assessment receive extensive attention in the latter chapters of the book. Despite the impressive content and global ambitions of this work, the simple principle that motivated its creation is never obscured; namely, that bilingual education, as practiced according to local needs, can be valuable for both minority and majority-language children, as well as for adult learners. Such a visionary proposal demands questioning traditional, monoglossic conceptions of bilingualism as a problem, and of bilingual individuals as the sum of two monolinguals. In thoughtfully critiquing the limitations of these notions, a dynamic view of bilingualism is developed which regards the phenomenon as both a right and resource while engendering a heteroglossic vision of bilingual individuals who fall all along points of a continuum in receptive and productive abilities in both their first and second (or multiple) languages. Thus, students labeled English language learners (ELLs) or limited English proficient students (LEPs) are referred to here as ‘emergent bilinguals’ (175), which reasserts bilingualism as a resource and recognizes learners’ differing instructional and assessment needs. One plus one does not always equal two and bilingual education pedagogy as both social justice and social practice emerge as guiding principles in the pursuit of equitable education for minority-language children. Part I maps out the content of the book. Bilingual education is defined (7 8) in terms of actual language use in the classroom, departing from abstract notions of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 13, No. 4, July 2010, 469 478