Interest in Asian languages in U.S. schools is rising rapidly, but the excitement often comes with a troubling question: Are we celebrating the cultures connected to these languages, or simply treating them as useful commodities?

In this episode, we break down key insights from the commentary “Walking a Fine Line: Tensions in Bilingual Education for Asian Languages in the United States” and explore the complex realities shaping Asian language programs today.

You’ll hear how educators and communities navigate realities such as:

• Schools prioritizing the benefits of learning languages like Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean while overlooking the deeper cultural knowledge, traditions, and lived experiences tied to them.
• Teachers being valued for their linguistic skills but not always respected for their identities, expertise, or the cultural labor they bring into classrooms.
• Growing interest in language proficiency that sometimes eclipses the importance of supporting heritage, belonging, and community connection for the students and families who need it most.
• The widening gap between what communities hope bilingual programs can offer and what schools actually deliver when decisions are driven by enrollment, prestige, or convenience.

But this story is also about possibility.

We highlight promising shifts, including statewide investments in recruiting teachers of languages such as Cantonese, Hmong, and Vietnamese, and the work educators are doing to create spaces that uplift identity and humanity rather than reduce languages to tools or trends.

This episode invites educators, families, and policymakers to reconsider the purpose of Asian language programs and to advocate for approaches that honor people, culture, and community as much as the languages themselves.

Subscribe, share, and stay bilingual. Thanks for listening!