I enjoyed reading Hall’s “The Sociocultural Worlds of Learners” in which he provides an overview of different research revealing the vitality and richness of the culturally and linguistically diverse worlds that learners bring with them to school. For me, the school is like a melting pot where the different cultural and linguistic worlds merge together. This reminds me the schooling days I had spent with my friends who were from different ethnic groups like Brahamin, Chettri, Baisya, and Sudra. Within these major ethnic groups, there are other multi ethnic groups. All these major or minor ethnic groups had different social, cultural, linguistic, and religious background and one could see their vitality and richness as sources of significant experiences, skills, knowledge, and beliefs. Because of our diverse social, cultural, and linguistic background, the classroom was the world of different “worlds,” the world that could represent multi ethnic groups of my community. I enriched my linguistic and cultural vision while I was studying in this linguistic and cultural diversity of learner’s world- the classroom in my school.
I do agree that there is always a significant and meaningful link or connection between the school and the community. Both are viewed as linguistically and culturally significant resources that help the learners to build their social, cultural, linguistic, and even religious background. I think that there is always a mutual connection between the community and the school. What makes me worry is what will happen if this link is disconnected due to power-relationship. As Hall says, it is possible that “the different worlds that non-mainstream learners bring with them to the class room are no longer viewed as sources of linguistic and cultural deprivation, or explained away as individual deficiencies.” This situation sometimes creates unexpected results like collapse of culture and loss of language in the long run if misunderstanding about the cultural and linguistic divergence among the learners develops. In order to run the world of diverse communities in a society, the different worlds that non-stream learners bring with them in the classroom should be viewed as linguistically and culturally significant resources. I think it is not possible to run the society according to the principles of school. Rather, I do believe that instead of trying to change learners so that they fit comfortably in traditional schooling practices, the pedagogic practices should seek to change schools so that all the learners can reflect and build on the linguistic and cultural diversity of learners’ world.
Going back to my schooling days, we did not have any homogeneous nature of communities as our community consisted of divergent ethnic groups. And so was the school. Each classroom had comprised many groups of students, with many languages and cultures. Following the traditional nature of imparting knowledge with no action or reaction from the student groups, there was no misunderstanding between the community and the school. However, the case is different now because of social change, pedagogic practices and learners’ awareness of their social and cultural position. So, this heterogeneous nature of my communities “gives rise to a number of social, economic and political issues which can only be addressed by applied linguistics and educators concerned with connecting learners’ sociocultural world to educational program” (Hall, 83).
