Bilingual Education : Friend or Foe?

Jennifer Smith

Faulkner University

Abstract

This paper explores both the history of bilingual education as well as it’s implications for American Society. We will define the difference between bilingual education and bilingualism. It takes a formative look at the Bilingual Education Act to see our roots in bilingual education. We will examine both the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism and it’s effect on the brain. Also, we will attempt to shed some needed light on just why this is such a hot political topic. Why do Americans still seem unwilling to accept bilingual education as a necessity for their children?

Bilingual Education: Friend or Foe?

Bilingual education is a polarizing topic in America. Torn between preserving American culture and what makes us American, and providing immigrant children with the same access to education that all Americans deserve, bilingual education is now a political topic in America. There have been many attempts to make positive changes in our education system concerning bilingual education. Even for those who agree that bilingual education is important, arriving at the answer to the best approach is on a meandering path. With decades of studies, opinions and speculation as to the right way to best educate English language learners, it is not unlikely that many Americans wonder if bilingual education is friend or foe? Answers to these questions can best be answered by looking deeper into the history of the Bilingual Education Act, statistics concerning bilingual education, and looking into why the American public could be mislead about what bilingual education really is.

Answering the question, “Bilingual Education: Friend or Foe?”, should start by making clear what bilingual education refers to. The focus is not just on bilingualism, which is the ability to communicate in two different languages with approximately equal facility, but on bilingual education. Bilingual education is a compilation of multicultural views through which diversity is enriched, and bilingualism becomes the ability to communicate effectively in two or more languages with a similar degree of proficiency. Bilingual education is a process to educate students to be effective in a second language while maintaining and nurturing their first language. What is more important to the debate, deciding whether the belief about bilingual education is to teach multiple languages in our schools, or is it about teaching language as apart of the assimilation of immigrant children into mainstream American society? {Garcia Martha 2007}

In reality, the belief about what is important in educating our children concerning bilingual education is really dictated by local beliefs. If the local population is only concerned with getting immigrants speaking our language, then they will only look at bilingual education as a way to acquisition. For those parents who are wanting a full and well rounded education that will lead to a multicultural and multidimensional school experience, they will support the teaching of multiple languages to all children. The problem that arises is firmly rooted in politics, history and patriotism. So many Americans believe that to change what we teach will be changing the fabric of our American culture.

“We have room for but one language in this country and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” (Nieto, 2000) Before the twentieth century, the U.S. government had actively imposed the use of English among Native Americans and the inhabitants of the incorporated territories of the Southwest. Though bilingual education has been a part of American culture since the beginning, it didn’t receive federal legislation and funding until The Bilingual Education Act of 1968. Texas Senator Yarborough introduced the act in 1967. The BEA established the first federal policy aiding Limited English Ability Students. The recommendations of the bill included the teaching of Spanish as a native language, the teaching of English as a second language, and programs designed to give Spanish-speaking students an appreciation of ancestral language and culture. The bill led to the introduction of 37 other bills which were merged into a single measure known at the Bilingual Education Act. Title VII was the first federal recognition of LESA students have special educational needs. In the interest of equal education, bilingual programs addressed those needs and allowed them to be federally funded. {StewnerManzanares 1988}

The Bilingual Education Act was a mammoth piece of legislation that reflected education and a new attitude toward diversity in our country. There was a shift in policy with the BEA toward creating policy that would help to equalize the outcomes of all students academic careers. A critical part of the BEA was that it reflected a cultural shift in perspective towards diversity and immigration. It was a huge turning point away from the 1950s’ anticommunist sentiment, which had destroyed previous attempt to help those who weren’t English speakers. The bill put accountability with the federal government for the responsibility of educating immigrants arriving to the US and helping to further open doors for bilingual projects in all areas of government.

The BEA helped to break down the barriers between assimilation and multiculturalism. The BEA in its original form promoted and encouraged the celebration of linguistic and cultural differences and diversity in the U.S. It in many ways challenged the assimilationist theory of the “melting pot” idea that so many American’s believe in. Furthermore, teachers were expected to not only teach language but to teach other content within a language besides English. Culturally teachers were not just teaching the language, they were helping to teach specific values to their school systems. Then we were relying on teachers to be the catalyst to break down barriers that different languages create. The BEA, signed into law in 1968, put a huge strain on the available teaching pool, which in turn created shortages of these highly specialized teachers. Even today we face shortages of teachers for these specialized positions.

The original bill, as Senator Yarborough envisioned it, was far from what was passed in 1968. It underwent significant changes between 1967 and 1968. Many of these changes were in the framing of the act. Unfortunately, it failed to recognize the strong link between language and culture. What the bill ended up doing was identifying a problem in American life that needed to be fixed. Lawmakers needed to make a way to keep LESA’s up to competency while quickly teaching them the language of our country. The bill was able to remain in existence as a defining point in American history for some 34 years. It set and increased funding for bilingual education, while setting up programs to train educators and to reward the promotion on bilingual education. It was a long reaching bill that caused the broadest change to the cultural diversity of the American landscape. (Petrzela, 2010) Lyndon B. Johnson put the thoughts of many Latino Americans as follows:

Thousands of children of Latin descent, young Indians, and others will get a better start—a better chance—in school. . . . We are now giving every child in America a better chance to touch his outermost limits. . . . We have begun a campaign to unlock the full potential of every boy and girl—regardless of his race, or his religion, or his father’s income. (Sanchez, 1973)

In acknowledging the presence of Spanish speakers in American classrooms and in committing federal funds to address their needs, the BEA warned of a new era in the national politics of diversity, schooling, and state.

An indirect outcome of the Bilingual Education Act is the studies and statistics that have provided debatable results over the last 40 plus years. Much research yielded debatable results for advocates and proponents to cling to. One such argument is over the drop out rate. Both sides of the debate cite evidence of the drop out rate to support their claims that the BEA did or did not work. Bilingual education has become a scapegoat for problems facing Hispanic students, including the dropout problem. Krashen (1999) cites figures from California reporting that 1,107,186 Hispanic students in California were classified LEP (49.7% of Hispanic students), but only 394,750 Hispanic students were enrolled in bilingual education class (representing 17.7% of Hispanic students). It is quite possible, according to these figures, that part of the Hispanic dropout problem is a function of Hispanic LEP students not being enrolled in bilingual programs. A large number of studies confirm that other factors count, such as socioeconomic class, time spent in the United States, the presence of print and family factors. Hispanic students are well behind majority children in these areas. What is especially interesting is that these background factors appear to be responsible for much of the difference in dropout rates among different ethnic groups. (Krashen, 1999) Another disadvantage to bilingual education include an unavailability of teachers. There is a wide gap between the demand and the supply for teachers who are confident and capable of handling the intense pressure associated with managing a class of multiple languages. In addition, there is a lack of available classrooms. Some school systems use a dual-language model, and require extra class space for LEP’s to go to for further instruction in English. Most importantly, some would argue there is lack of funding. With school districts facing so many shortages in maintaining quality education it becomes increasingly difficult to divert funds to special programs like bilingual education. In fact, those who oppose bilingual education often raise the question, “why?” Why use funds that should support those who are American to those who are immigrants needing to learn a new language.

Immigrants and citizens have broad varying views on what the best policy should be. Many look at bilingual education as an aspect of education that should be rooted in necessity and not just merely an extra. Sarah Holt cites, in her article, “Advantages of Bilingual Education”, that bilingual education is an addition and not a detraction. For those who support bilingual education in the classroom they point to the many advantages of bilingualism as reason to support stronger bilingual education programs. When a child is fluent in multiple languages, he or she will know more than one word for the same object. Current research suggests that this can add to the cognitive flexibility of the child. The different connotations and ideas around a word allow the child to build a more complex understanding of the word at a younger age. Ellen Bialystok and Kenji Hakuta in their book, “In Other Words”, examines the idea that, "The knowledge of two languages is greater than the sum of its parts." They argue that the benefits from being bilingual go much further than simply knowing two languages. {Wikipedia, 2012}

Bilingual children are far superior at multitasking than monolingual children, adults who speak more than one language do a better job prioritizing information in confusing situations, and being bilingual helps ward off early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in the elderly. Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto writes that these benefits come from having a brain that's constantly juggling two languages. For instance, a person who speaks both Hindi and Tamil can't turn Tamil off even if he's speaking to only Hindi users, because the brain is constantly deciding which language is most appropriate for a given situation. The constant back and forth means the brain is getting frequent exercise in the prefrontal cortex. This is the area of the brain tasked with focusing one’s attention and ignoring distractions. (Kahn, 2011) Learning to juggle two languages in the brain is a skill that probably deserves credit for bilinguals' cognitive advantages. However, researchers emphasize this doesn't mean they learn any better than people who speak only one language. It does keep the brain more nimble, allowing bilingual people to multitask better, pick out key information faster and more effectively ignore surrounding distractions.

So with all the reasons to educate all children bilingually, why do American schools still give most instruction in only English? This is where politics takes hold in this hot bead issue. “The Case Against Bilingualism”, although written by Trudy J. Sundberg many years ago, still makes many poignant arguments about what it means to be an American, moreover why we are a unique culture. The United States is a country of great diversity, and English is the glue that holds our uniquely multicultural country together. The English language is what makes its people American regardless of national origin.

Sundberg, uses James Michener’s novel Texas to give illustration to the

argument against bilingualism. The Character, Professor Roy Aspen, gives this rousing

description of the case against:

For a nation like the United States, which has a workable central tongue used by many countries around the world, consciously to introduce linguistic separatism and to encourage it by the expenditure of public funds is to create and encourage a danger which could in time destroy this nation as other nations with linguistic problems have been destroyed. {Sundberg:1988ux}

This statement refers to countries such as South Africa that have two official languages, English and Afrikaans. It is also noted that South Africa has about a dozen other home languages. To have that many different languages is to split the fabric that makes a country a unified entity. {Sundberg:1988ux} When you have no common loyalty and nothing other than the land itself, it is the language of the people that forges the bond of it’s inhabitants.

The fact that immigrants can come to this country and learn it’s language is what

makes them American. Simply coming and setting up residency and using programs and receiving benefits does not make you American. The language of America is undeniably

English. It is for that reason that laws proposed in Congress and in some states that would

designate English as the official language should not be viewed as anti-immigrant or even racist. Governor Richard Lamm, of Colorado states,

“We should be color blind but not linguistically deaf. We should be a rainbow but not a cacophony. We should welcome different people but not adopt different languages”. (Sundberg, 1988)

The seriousness of this debate cannot be underestimated; to do so would lead to the reprimand of Untied States history. It is currently in our own hands as to the fate of our fellow Americans as to the road we shall travel. For to create some sort of dual linguistic society would change the scope of the moral clothe that makes Americans who we are. It is not without noting that the closeness we have forged as a country is very much because of the language we share.

Is there an answer to the question, “Bilingual Education: Friend or Foe?” It is one of the great challenges facing educators today; how to continue to prepare American youth as well as immigrant children who come to this country seeking the same freedoms that we hold dear. Some common ground must be reached if we as a nation are going to succeed in educating our countries’ youth. We must strike some sort of balance between a unified country who speaks the same language, and helping all who call America home feel accepted and acquiesced into our society. We as Americans would be remiss if we didn’t take a more multicultural approach to educating our children.

References

Kahn, A. (2011, February 26). Bilingualism is good for the brain, neuroscience researchers say - Los Angeles Times. articles.latimes.com. Retrieved September 19, 2012, from http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/26/health/la-he-bilingual-brain-20110227

Krashen, S. D. (1999). Condemned without a Trial: Bogus Arguments against Bilingual Education.

Nieto, D. (2000). A brief history of bilingual education in the united states. PERSPECTIVES ON, 61.

Petrzela, N. M. (2010). Before the Federal Bilingual Education Act: Legislation and Lived Experience in California. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(4), 406–424. doi:10.1080/0161956X.2010.518021

Sundberg, T. J. (1988). The Case against Bilingualism. The English Journal, 77(3), 16–17.