Bilingual education policy and social justice

A critical policy decision to be made in a school system is the choice of the language that is to be used as the medium of instruction for children. This article examines the evidence to suggest that policies of bilingual education are desirable on social justice grounds in pluralist societies. It also examines several specific justice‐related issues in the bilingual education policy area. As recently as the early 1980s the conventional policy in education for dealing with speakers of minority languages was to ignore the minority language and to replace it with the language of education. The policy continues unchanged in many OECD countries even though a good deal of minority school failure can be directly attributed to that policy. This article argues that an educational system serving a multilingual society but providing only monolingual schooling exercises power unjustly or is being used to exercise power unjustly. In order to achieve just educational provisions for culturally different people in pluralist societies the article concludes that local minority communities should be involved in deciding the shape and direction of their children's schools.