The issue of bilingual education in the United States has come up quite frequently throughout history, and whether it would benefit the students whose mother tongue is a language other than English. In Aria by Richard Rodriguez, he goes into the past and present of his life growing up with Spanish being his first language in school in the U.S. He later goes on to say, how he in fact, was and is against having a bilingual education in the school system, for it took away an individual's private language and turned it into a public language. However, such a statement seems to contradict to how he ended up to be with language, which is the fact that Spanish ultimately faded away from his life, no longer making it the private language he strongly …show more content…
In my household the only language spoken was Spanish with a few English words thrown around here and there, making it extremely difficult to learn English when I first began school, for it was a new world I wasn’t used to being in. Beginning the chapter, Rodriguez reflects on such a similar experience and how he would yearn to go home where he could speak with confidence and comfort. As he grew older, he was forced to speak English in the household as well, to improve his learning environment at school. Such a requirement is when the intimacy he had with the Spanish language began to slowly fade to the point where he could only understand Spanish, but he himself could not speak it. Such an occurrence in my opinion is due to the fact that the school system forced him and his family assimilate the English language into their life as much as possible, as if telling them speaking Spanish would no longer be acceptable if they wanted their children to succeed in school. To me, such an idea or rule on forcing the practice of only one language astonishes me. I feel as if your native language should continue to be spoken at homes to stay in touch with your cultural roots and the schools themselves should help students in learning English at schools and accommodating to their needs to learn the new language even if it includes a bilingual education. I do, however, believe if a bilingual education were to come into play there should be a limit as to how long it should continue. It should only last for the first two years of school to help the student adjust to the new language he/she has not been exposed to. From there on, the schools should encourage the student to speak that language as much as possible, but still not force him/her to stop practicing their native language only