Book Review: "Who’s Afraid of Multilingual Education?: Conversations with Tove SkutnabbKangas, Jim Cummins, Ajit Mohanty and Stephen Bahry about the Iranian Context and Beyond"

In recent decades, much has been written about multilingual education (MLE) in educational research communities as well as in social, cultural, and political arenas in many parts of the world. However, browsing the topic singles out Iran as an exception as little attention from both local and international academia has been focused on MLE in this context. Yet, Iran, a country of approximately ۸۰ millions, has people with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and has a rich linguistic diversity (around ۷۰ languages), with the living presence of some well-known minority languages (e.g., Azari, Kurdish, and Arabic). These demographics presented, Farsi is overwhelmingly used as the official language in, but not limited to, education, government, and media. Targeting the educational sector, Amir Kalan, the author of Who’s Afraid of Multilingual Education?, underlines the importance of creating mother tongue-based MLE in Iran by adding the views of established international scholars to the mother tongue debate as applicable to Iran’s multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural society.

Keywords:

Amir Kalan , Iran , Minority Languages , Multilingual Education , Multilingualism