Symposium on Language, People, and Society: On the Necessity of Multilingual Education

Interview with Amir Kalan, Researcher

Farshteh Nezakati - Radio Zamaneh - November 3, 2023

Dr. Amir Kalan

Education in one’s mother tongue is not only a fundamental human right, but the lack of such education also causes various harms. Examining these harms is one of the main topics of a symposium at McGill University. We spoke with Amir Kalan, a professor of multilingual education at McGill University, on this subject.

The symposium, titled “Language, People, and Society: Iranian Minority Languages and Literary Traditions,” is set to take place online on November 9, 10, and 11. This symposium will address diverse topics within minority languages, the language of disability, gendered language, and language and power. In connection with this event, we interviewed Amir Kalan, an alumnus of Educational Studies from the University of Toronto, Canada, and a professor of multilingual education at McGill University.

Kalan believes that education in one’s mother tongue is a right and that the current approach taken in Iran, where only Persian is taught to children who speak a different language—such as Kurdish, Turkish, Balochi, and others—leads to significant psychological and educational harm. This approach often results in school dropouts or difficulties in engaging with the Persian language. Ultimately, within a harmful cycle, it can lead to experiences of anxiety, depression, a sense of failure, academic obstacles, and, more broadly, various social harms.

In an interview with Zamaneh, Amir Kalan speaks about the state of mother-tongue education in Iran:

Mother-tongue education is a concept that has been accepted and successfully implemented in many countries. However, in Iran, due to the nation-state policies pursued by the government, not only is mother-tongue education not considered, but efforts are also made to weaken minority ethnic groups by criminalizing their grassroots activities and obstructing them.

Amir Kalan, an alumnus of Educational Studies from the University of Toronto and a professor of multilingual education at McGill University, published the book Who’s Afraid of Multilingual Education? in 2016 in English and in 2018 in a Persian translation. This book is a collection of four complete interviews on bilingualism and multilingualism, covering nearly all the main arguments for and against this issue.

He says, “The lack of mother-tongue education can harm linguistic vitality. The absence of formal education in a language, when only used in daily conversations, can halt the growth of the language and, in the long term, cause serious harm to it.”

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Link to the original text in Farsi: Radio Zamaneh article.