Community Languages and Anti‐racist Education: the open battlefield

The shift from a multicultural to an anti‐racist perspective in education left the issue of community languages aside. There seem to be four reasons for the persisting marginal position of community languages within anti‐racist education in Britain: (1) the gap between the theoretical concept of anti‐racist education and its implementation in practice; (2) the prevalent mainstream doctrine; (3) the pervasive international hegemony of English language; and (4) the political devaluation of ethnicity approaches. The 1988 United Kingdom Education Reform Act, along with the European integration and its accompanying Eurocen‐trism, appears to marginalise the community languages even further.