Sacrifice, "success," and values

Another post that I started at the beginning of our first year of preschool, but never posted...

I've also been thinking about the values embedded in choosing language immersion--perhaps not all language immersion, but in some cases at least. For most of us, when we think about our child's education, it's all about our child and her development. When we say we want the best education for our child, we usually mean an education that will enable her to be a "successful" adult--to have the tools to be a leading (or at least functioning) member of society. We want her to have accomplishments she can be proud of, to earn respect through a degree, helping people, supporting the community, creating beautiful art, or whatever it is. Perhaps we want her to find her true self and the true path that will make her happy as an adult.

We often think of education as preparation for a job or career, perhaps not at the preschool level, but increasingly as students progress to the next grade level, from elementary to high school to college. I have always imagined that Chinese language immersion and other types of language immersion are viewed with an eventual career in mind too--not always, but sometimes. Chinese language immersion exists, in part, because people feel that Chinese is now a valuable language as China gains money and power. I imagine that other language immersion is also pursued for similar reasons--a businessman who is bilingual has more earning potential.

With Hawaiian and other endangered (or formerly endangered) languages, however, I think the purpose is different. It occurred to me at one point that, in some sense, by enrolling our child in Hawaiian language immersion, we are putting the language and the community above our child. As someone who received a western education, both at school and at home, I was very uncomfortable with this. I assured myself that she would still "succeed." The school addresses these concerns. At orientation, they talk about how the method they use enables students to learn to read at age 4 rather than at age 5 or 6, as in English school. They invite to speak the immersion graduate who earned her Ph.D. These all speak to parental concerns about our children's "success."

Of course, like with other language immersion programs in which children are often learning about languages that their ancestors spoke, we might believe that this connection to their culture will help them be "successful."

By enrolling our child in Hawaiian immersion, though, we are also committing her and, to a lesser degree our family, to helping in the project of keeping Hawaiian alive and advancing it. At first, this struck me as a sacrifice, but recently I've started thinking about it differently. It's not a sacrifice; it simply reflects different values. By enrolling our child in Hawaiian immersion, we are communicating to our child that the most important thing is not for her as an individual to "succeed" (however we define that). The most important thing is the (Hawaiian? Hawaiian-speaking?) community and for her to be a part of it.

When I think about my own education and growth from childhood and, more importantly, through adolescence and then as an adult trying to find my way in life, I wonder how it would have affected me if I had been the recipient of that message. Maybe it would have helped me find direction.