The Shoulders We Stand On: A History of Bilingual Education in New Mexico

Winner of the 2021 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association

The Shoulders We Stand On traces the complex history of bilingual education in New Mexico, covering Spanish, Dine, and Pueblo languages. The book focuses on the formal establishment of bilingual education infrastructure and looks at the range of contemporary challenges facing the educational environment today. The book’s contributors highlight particular actions, initiatives, and people that have made significant impacts on bilingual education in New Mexico, and they place New Mexico’s experience in context with other states’ responses to bilingual education. The book also includes an excellent timeline of bilingual education in the state. The Shoulders We Stand On is the first book to delve into the history of bilingual education in New Mexico and to present New Mexico’s leaders, families, and educators who have pioneered program development, legislation, policy, evaluation, curriculum development, and teacher preparation in the field of bilingual multicultural education at state and national levels. Historians of education, educators, and educators in training will want to consider this as required reading.