"Bilingual Education" Is A Nice Way Of Saying "How To Keep Spanish Speakers From Joining Our Economy"
Ron Unz, who headed up the "English For Children" initiative some years back, calling for English immersion for kids in California schools -- and successfully getting Prop 227 passed to do that, writes:
"Bilingual education" is largely a misnomer, and in practice the system invariably amounted to Spanish-almost-only instruction.Most Latino immigrant children grow up with Spanish being the language of their home. Their families usually watch Spanish TV, listen to Spanish radio, and most of the people in their neighborhood speak Spanish in their daily lives. So if these young children, knowing Spanish as their sole language, eagerly enter kindergarten or the first grade only to encounter classrooms in which nearly all the instruction is once again in Spanish, is it really so surprising that they might remain monolingual Spanish-speakers for a considerable number of years?
...The whole notion that schools should teach English to children who already know Spanish hardly constitutes a revolutionary pedagogical notion. After all, schools usually concentrate on teaching children what they don't already know rather what they do, but with regard to language, this only became the case after the June 1998 passage of Prop. 227 and its full implementation in September of that year. A million or more immigrant schoolchildren were suddenly exposed to six or seven hours a day of English in their classrooms, quickly absorbing that new language "like little sponges," while still often spending the remainder of their childhood in an almost entirely Spanish-speaking neighborhood environment. Given such a truly "bilingual" upbringing, it's hardly surprising that over the last decade or two so many of them have become fully bilingual young adults.
...The only group never reconciled to the disappearance of bilingual education was the small, but zealous clique of bilingual ed activists, many of them the same individuals who had opposed our initiative back in 1998, still just as rigidly committed to their doctrinaire beliefs but now 18 years older.
Doctrinaire and self-serving beliefs. When you are, say, a guy who runs a Fotomat, the last thing you want to see is everybody taking pix on their iPhones.
The problem is, these people are supposed to have the kids' best interest at heart.
Um, nopies. But, still, they tried to paint it that way. And now they are trying to appeal Prop 227 so they can keep their way of earning a living going -- at the expense of the kids.
Disgusting, appalling, and entirely self-serving.
We started my son in German language play groups at 3. However, I made the fatal error of speaking to the teacher in English. Even at 3, he was smart enough to know that the teacher spoke English so there was no need for him to learn German.
So, he didn't. Oh sure, he started to understand things, but he didn't say a word in German.
When he started Kindergarten, I told his teachers they must never let him know that they spoke English. Within a couple months, he was speaking like a Swiss kid.
Immersion is the only way to go and for a little kid, they learn so, so, so fast.
Suzanne Lucas at September 12, 2016 11:16 PM
Thanks, Suzanne -- great example.
Amy Alkon at September 13, 2016 5:27 AM
Typical ruling-class behavior these days. "The people clearly don't want this, but we want it, so we're going to ram it down their throats." Don't be surprised when bilingual education gets implemented anyway even if/when Prop 58 is voted down.
Cousin Dave at September 13, 2016 6:16 AM
The problem is, these people are supposed to have the kids' best interest at heart.
Um, nopies.
And they're in the Teacher's union? ordinarily I would say the kids would rank 4th or 5th on their list, but since these guys reason to exist is bilingual teaching, that drops the little dears to 5th or 6th on the list of importance.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 13, 2016 6:56 AM
Even at 3, he was smart enough to know that the teacher spoke English so there was no need for him to learn German.
That's the teacher's fault. Speak German or I will ignore you. As you eventually found out, once that happens he sprechen sie Deutsche pretty darn quickly.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 13, 2016 7:01 AM
English fluency allows integration. It allows Hispanic folks to move from California to Rhode Island and (mostly) blend in. English fluency allows them to attend any university in the country; allows them to work for any employer or in any field for which they qualify and not be dependent upon the state of California.
Stick 'em in a Hispanic ghetto in East LA, Bakersfield, Salinas, or Hayward and they can't go anywhere.
Why on earth would anyone dedicated to expanding government control want people to have the freedom to determine the course of their own lives?
Perhaps it's not as cynical as that, but it has the same result, a bloc of people creating a mini nation-within-a-nation. Might as well cede Southern California back to Mexico.
Multilingualism works for Switzerland, a small nation on the border of three countries and with no language of its own. The US is a large country and we risk creating physical enclaves of what are essentially foreign languages and cultures if we pursue this course. Canada is going through this exercise in not only accommodating Francophones in Quebec, but mandating all signs, placards, and public documents in Quebec be in French and English, with the French predominant. And there are stiff legal penalties for failure to comply. Some more radical groups are even using violence to punish non-compliance with French language requirements. There was even talk of Quebec seceding from Canada and aligning itself with France instead of Britain - because apparently the French and Indian Wars didn't settle anything.
Conan the Grammarian at September 13, 2016 7:52 AM
Very good point, I R A Darth Aggie.
Reminds me of something I thought was odd in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "These Happy Golden Years," when she's teaching school and struggling to get her five pupils to take her seriously:
"All the trouble came from Clarence. He could make Ruby and Tommy behave, if he would; he was their older brother. He could learn his lessons; he was much smarter than Martha and Charles. How she wished that she were big enough to give Clarence the whipping he deserved."
I mean, if she can't make Ruby and Tommy (aged 9 and 11) properly afraid of her, how is that someone else's fault?!
Granted, Laura was only four-feet-eleven, barely sixteen, and dealing with three students older and taller than she was, but still...
lenona at September 13, 2016 9:11 AM
"There was even talk of Quebec seceding from Canada and aligning itself with France instead of Britain."
I've spent some time in Toronto, and when I ask people there about this, the response I get is usually on the order of: "They aren't serious about seceding. Their economy would collapse if they did that. It's just a sword to hold over Ottawa's head." I was living in South Florida in the early '80s when the first wave (and the one that came closest to succeeding) of secession fever hit Quebec. All of a sudden there were all these Quebecois in Miami. I asked what was going on, and one of them told me: "We fear that the government will seize our assets because we do business in English." Most of them were bilingual; only a few were English-only speakers. The Montreal Expos eventually had to move to Washington because they couldn't get even a radio broadcast deal, much less television. Why not? The government would not let them broadcast in English at all, not even as a second language broadcast.
Cousin Dave at September 13, 2016 10:23 AM
We are raising our kids trilingual. They need to be trilingual to talk to the locals and all their relatives.
School is total immersion. I'd be annoyed if they started giving my kids classes in English. They get English and German at home. They'll eventually get classes in German and English were they can learn grammery stuff like the present perfect or whatever.
But I count on the full immersion in the schools for their French. If they started giving half the classes in English, I'd be in a bind, because which would I speak at home, French or English? I want my kids to learn both, but the current philosophy on raising polyglot kids is 1 language per person.
And even here in Switzerland the schools are generally not multilingual. They are French OR German OR Italian not all at once. Plenty of kids grow up learning many languages but not because their schools dont teach the local one.
NicoleK at September 13, 2016 10:51 AM
While bilingual education might make sense (a little sense, not a lot) for older students, like high school, young children will learn English within weeks in regular school. Older children may need a more intensive immersion. But keeping them in "bilingual" is a classic case of "helping" which causes more harm than good.
Craig Loehle at September 13, 2016 12:06 PM
There is pretty good research that while bilingual students pick up conversational English quickly, their academic English lags far behind. Students that learn academic subjects in their native tongue understand it better and can transfer the knowledge to a new language. When they don't understand the language or spend their mental energy on translation, academics suffer and the window of learning opportunity closes and neural pathways consolidate.
Yes, students may have an accent but they will have a broader base of knowledge. Students are most successful if they have an education in more than one language. Bilingual students at our school outscore monolingual Hispanics, Anglo, and African American students.
Success is dependent on an early start and a good program.
Yes, it's counterintuitive but has been shown to be successful if done right.
Jen at September 13, 2016 10:04 PM
"students may have an accent but they will have a broader base of knowledge. Students are most successful if they have an education in more than one language. Bilingual students at our school outscore monolingual Hispanics, Anglo, and African American students."
Perhaps this is because smarter kids can pick up two or more languages more easily and has nothing to do with bilingual instruction, or the lack of it?
Isab at September 14, 2016 6:54 PM
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