Thread by @nelsonlflores

So much of the research on so-called heritage speakers of Spanish is built on the premise that these students need to be taught the “prestige” form of Spanish. But this premise is primarily curriculum driven rather than based on the actual needs of these learners.

Most heritage speakers take Spanish classes with the end goal of being more connected to their families and cultures and because they want to use their bilingualism to help people. In contrast, most Spanish classes assume the end goal to be the ability to read Don Quixote.

The end goal of engaging in elite literature leads the Spanish of heritage speakers to be framed as inadequate. But many monolingual Spanish speakers have also never engaged with this literature. Does this make their Spanish inadequate too?

Some might argue but if we don’t teach heritage speakers prestige forms of Spanish they won’t be able to effectively communicate with other Spanish speakers. Here’s the thing: most Spanish speakers don’t speak using prestige forms.

So maybe the problem isn’t that heritage speakers use non-prestige forms but rather that many Spanish language classrooms in the US presuppose the goal of learning Spanish should be to converse with elites in prestige forms about obscure literature.

When starting with such elitist goals it is not surprising that heritage language research and practice has struggled to conceptualize a coherent role for the home language practices of students in the classroom. Perhaps rethinking the goals might be an important first step.

And before anybody defends Spanish literature my point is not that it isn’t worth reading but that when this is presupposed as the goal for all students that it often leads the home language practices of US Latinxs to be deficitized while also ignoring their goals for themselves.

We should not allow curricular goals that were developed in a different era for different students with different aspirations to be used to justify marginalizing contemporary students.