This paper draws from Fishman’s stated worry about the restrictions of school success in connection with mother tongue transmission as advanced in his debates of inverting language shift, but it problematizes the concept of language maintenance and intergenerational transmission from the viewpoint of current theoretical shifts in the domains of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. It centers on the dilemmas facing the design and execution of heritage language teaching and evaluation programs given the various mechanisms involved in curricularizing language: that is, in the process of handling language as if were a common academic subject.