Language Education Policy (LEP) is the process through which the ideals, goals, and contents of a language policy can be realized in education practices. Language policies express ideological processes. Their analysis reveals the perceptions of realities proper to certain sociocultural contexts. LEPs further their ideologies by defining and disseminating the values of policymakers. Because Language Education Policies are related to status, ideology, and vision of what society should be and traditions of thoughts, such issues are complex, quickly evolving, submitted to trends and political views, and they need to be studied calmly. The way to approach them is to get comparative information on what has been done in many settings, which are working or not, which are their flaws and merits, and try to grasp the contextual variables that might apply in specific locations, without generalizing too fast. Policy discourses and curricula reveal the ideological framing of the constructs that they encode and create, project, enact, and enforce aspects such as language status, power and rights through projective texts generated to forward and describe the contexts of their enactments. Policy documents are therefore socially transformative through their evaluative function that frames and guides action in order to achieve language reforms. While temperance and reflection are required to address such complex issues, because moving to fast may create trouble, nonetheless the absence of action in this domain may lead to systemic intolerance, injustice, inequity, mass discrimination and even, genocidal crimes. For more, see HERE.
|
|