Jim Cummins "Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention"

Jim Cummins presents in his article “Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention” a theoretical framework for analyzing minority students’ school failure and the relative lack of success of previous attempts at educational reform, for example compensatory education and bilingual education. Cummins suggests that these attempts have been unsuccessful because they have not altered significantly the relationships between educators and minority students and between schools and minority communities. He shows ways in which educators can change these relationships, thereby promoting the empowerment of students, which can lead them to succeed in school. Minority children’s cognitive/academic growth and socio-psychological development are enhanced by maintaining and further developing their first language. Cummins’s “Developmental Interdependence Hypothesis” explains that the development and maintenance of minority students’ home language contribute extensively to the learning of a second language and academic success. A child’s second language competence is partly dependent on the level of competence already achieved in the first language. The more developed the first language, the earlier it will be to develop the second language. When the first language is at a low stage of development, the more difficulty the achievement of bilingualism will be.