Bilingual Education and Social Class: some speculative observations in the Hong Kong context.

In this paper, we propose a possible correlation between bilingual education and social class. We investigate this assumption along four parameters: intergroup relationship, usefulness of the target language, first language proficiency and quality of program; we argue that the results differ depending on the social-economic background of the learners. When the four variables are applied to the bilingual program in Hong Kong, we find a similar situation, namely, that because of the different language learning environment, members from the lower social-economic background are less likely to learn successfully in a bilingual program than those from the higher social background. We also suspect that since 90% of the programs in our secondary education system are bilingual, learners from certain social groups may find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for equal educational opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]