Francois Victor Tochon

Policy for Peace: Language Education Unlimited - Language Education Policy Francois Victor Tochon

Unlimited plurilingual education could be a policy for peace. The book has 13 chapters that span numerous countries and cultures--a fascinating in-depth look at China, Timor-Leste, Japan, Spain, France, U. S., and Brazil; in addition to three theoretical chapters. This critical and fascinating book explicates institutionalized violence, yet tells a story of achieving peace through language education policy, citing examples from numerous countries, situations, and policy frameworks; merging the field of language education policy into international peace education.



The characters featured in this narrative of experience demonstrate concepts and qualities from the macro- to the micro-level: governments, states and armies; English as a so-called Global Lingua Franca; policies; curriculum; then the voices of speakers such as Indigenous people, those without access to English (and other dominant languages), and immigrants; actors such as policymakers, program developers, and teachers--often unprepared, untrained to resolve conflicts, products of their societies. Finally the reader may find the more abstract--thriving languages and the endangered languages and knowledge systems--especially indigenous and non-western, non-dominant languages perhaps without a standardized corpus and teaching materials for young people to learn them.



With a strong conceptual and theoretical base in critical systems theory and peace education, beginning and ending in Asia and concluding in indigenous models of education, project-based peace pedagogy, and plurilingualism as language education policy as the necessary ingredient for PEACE--the book provides an invaluable and transdisciplinary resource for teacher educators, policymakers, multicultural education, linguists, advocates of social justice, and anthropologists.