Page 24 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
undesirable. It may be worth asking ourselves how we can reconcile civic equality with cultural equality21, and to what extent this inequality is acceptable. This may be difficult for us to define, even though we know what inequality entails, because we have become accustomed to a certain state of affairs around us. Already in 1974 Pirsig said that we may not be able to define inequality, but we know it when we see it. When it comes to equality education, we know what a long way we still have to go. However, according to Teutsch (2002, p. 22), it is possible to put in place mechanisms by which we can recognise discrimination and give support to groups of people affected by it, which would accelerate processes of achieving social equality.
In Poland there is no programme for bilingual, multilingual, or plurilingual education suitable for migrant pupils. Mainstream education in our country, as in many countries in the world, seems to overlook the fact that minority and migrant pupils are influenced by complex social, economic, historical, and cultural factors, as well as by the relationship between minority and mainstream culture. Students from minority groups face social-adjustment and school-performance problems due to differences in culture and language, as well as their relationship with the dominant culture (Ng-A-Fook et al., 2012). Currently, the mainstream curriculum in Poland conforms to a discourse that supports assimilation, and thus provides for the assimilation of culturally diverse groups into the mainstream curriculum, without addressing the nature of minority cultural diversity. The number of minority and migrant students in primary schools in Poland is increasing. In the 2012/2013 school year, the number of all minority pupils in Poland was 7311, while in 2014/2015 it increased to 10,064 and in 2016/2017 to 20,911 pupils (data from the Centre for Education Development/Center for Education Development in Warsaw and the Ministry of National Education). In the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 23 August 2017 on the education of persons who are not Polish citizens and persons who are Polish citizens who have received education in schools operating in the educational systems of other countries (Journal of Laws 2017, item 1655), the following words were added to the objectives of general education in primary school in the core curriculum text:
... strengthening the sense of individual, cultural, national, regional, and ethnic identity [...]. The Republic of Poland shall enable members of national and ethnic minorities to maintain their national and ethnic identity through the organisation of minority language teaching.
This statement broadened the teaching repertoire of schools in favour of minority pupils, who were given with the opportunity to receive instruction in the minority language during school hours. Prior to this change, students could only have two or three hours per week of additional instruction in Polish as a second language and were otherwise fully immersed and assimilated into the Polish school system, language, and culture. However, in order for students to have either of these two options, school principals must apply on their behalf. Parents of pupils usually know little about educational law in Poland and rarely ask questions, partly due to a sense of embarrassment resulting from unfamiliarity with the official language. If we take another look at the statistics mentioned above and compare them with the number of students who attend classes in Polish as a second language, we can see that there is very little interest. In the 2012/2013 school year, there were7311minority students in total in Poland, but only 280 attended PSL classes. Similarly, in 2014/2015, only 438 students out of 10,064 benefited from PSL, and in 2016/2017 the number increased to 1355 out of 20,911 (data from the Centre for
21 What is civic equality in cultural diversity under the conditions of the existence of one, necessarily privileged, "indigenous", "our", "own" dominant culture. Zamojska, 2010, p. 40.
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