为了和平: 无限可能的语言&#25

This volume is expertly conceived and edited by François Tochon and Kristine Harrison, and sponsored by the International Network for Language Education Policy Studies, based in Wisconsin, USA, and makes an important contribution to this growing literature. The foundational premise that ties the chapters and gives coherence to the entire volume is set out clearly by Tochon and Harrison as “Policy for Peace is Multilingual.” In this chapter the editors develop the thesis that a properly conceived multilingual approach to education can be “a useful instrument of peace education” and that when societies provide incentives for multilingualism a deeper cross-cultural form of communication is fostered, perceptions of alternative viewpoints are encouraged and dialogue and exchange are fostered. From these promising premises the volume develops these themes through thirteen well argued chapters spanning a range of different world contexts and themes (English, classrooms, indigenous settings and “international peace work”). The authors document, empirically as well as discursively, a panorama of possibilities for the connections between the realms of language education, whether at the classroom level, the level of curriculum, or that of policy, and questions of long-term sustainable co-existence in the increasingly multi-ethnic societies of our globe. A particularly valuable aspect of this work is the bringing together of literatures from different language traditions. As the reader is informed by these different traditions on the problems of peaceful co-existence between ethnic, language and other human groupings, the different historical interpretations serve to enrich our conceptual understanding of the challenges involved in social cohesion.

Dr. Joseph Lo Bianco, Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

François TochonKristine Harrison