FREE ESSAY ON BILINGUAL EDUCATION

BILINGUAL EDUCATION

Bilingual Education = Unilingual Education
Bilingual education in America is a sound idea, but it is not truly bilingual education,
it is only bilingual for those who do not already speak English. America is a country
with more and more cultures mixing together with different areas of America speaking
different languages. In California, Spanish is the dominant language next to English, and
in states such as Maine, French is spoken. Other cultures should not be assimilated into
mainstream America completely, but America shouldn't have to bend over backwards to make
life easier for foreigners. In order to become more culturally tolerant, everyone should
learn a second language, not just immigrants. Americans should make bilingual education
truly bilingual.
The first reason is to eliminate the effect bilingual education has on poor, non-English
speaking children. In Richard Bernstein's, "A War of Words" he says, "Advocates of
bilingual education believe that it represents the best chance for non-English speaking
children -- who, not so coincidentally, often come from lower-income groups - to enjoy
the richness and opportunities of American life", but he also writes, "...Bilingual
education is a failure, a tactic that in the end will harm the chances of the generally
poor, non-English speaking children ever having a equal share in the promise of American
life." By simply having everyone learn a second language eliminates the lines of income,
and ethnic background.
Truly bilingual education would also eliminate the psychological effects it has on
non-English speaking children. When they are in a classroom filled with people who do not
speak the same language they do, they are forced to feel alone because they can not
perform at the same level as their peers, they feel there is something wrong with them,
lower than everyone else. "'Empowering Minority Students' does not argue that a child's
inability to speak English is what leads him to fail if he is put into an English
classroom. Children fail...because they are made to feel 'shame' for belonging to a
minority group, for not being a part of the dominant group. The only way to 'empower'
such children...is for the teachers to 'consciously challenge the power structure both in
their classrooms and schools and in the society at large' Bilingual education...is an
'empowerment pedagogy.' It is an act of rebellion against white, Anglo Domination
(Bernstein 2). Truly bilingual education would prevent any one child from feeling lower
than the other since they would all be sharing the same experience of learning another
language. In California for example, immigrants would be learning to speak English, while
children who already speak English would be learning another language also. Most likely
the "dominant minority language" in the area. In this case Spanish, but of course Spanish
would not be the only language available. The choice would be up to the parents.
Total immersion in a foreign language is a necessity. Non-English speaking children must
be totally immersed in English, and the same for the native English speakers, they must
be immersed completely in, for example, Italian. "Under the dominant method of bilingual
education used throughout this country, non-English speaking students are taught all
academic subjects such as math, science, and history exclusively in their native
language. English is a separate subject. The problem with this method is that there is no
objective way to measure whether a child has learned enough English to be placed in
classes where academic instruction is entirely in English. As a result, some children
have been kept in native language classes for six years" (Hayakawa 3). There are many
people who will agree that trying to learn a language is not something a person does in a
hour everyday. That person must be totally immersed in the language, they must be
speaking that language all of the time, or at least more than they speak their native
language. If the people in the current bilingual education courses were totally immersed
in English, they would have no choice, but to adapt and learn the language in order to
function. It does not take a child six years to learn a language when they are forced to
do so.
Children learn at an exceptionally fast rate, if they are immersed in one language, it
would not be very long until they are fluent in that language. If children started
learning a second language in the third grade, they would most likely be fluent by fifth
or sixth grade, which leaves plenty of time to perhaps learn a third? With all of these
children learning all different types of languages, there will eventually be a breakdown
in communication. Sooner or later someone who prefers to speak Spanish is going to run
into someone who prefers to speak Russian. This is exactly the reason many people believe
that English should be made the official language of the United States. "Because we are a
nation of immigrants, we do not share the characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity,
or native language which form the common bonds of society on other countries. However, by
agreeing to learn and use a single, universally spoken language, we have been able to
forge a unified people from an incredibly diverse population"(Hayakawa 2) This is a good
idea, but it would only be required if everyone knew more than one language. Most
Americans today only know English. Until this fact changes, there is no need to make
English the official language of the US, but even if it were a problem now, English
should be made the "default" language. Meaning that it is to be used only in the event of
a communications breakdown. The man who prefers to speak Spanish tries to speak to a man
who prefers to speak Russian, they both result to the "default" language of English so
they can communicate. When they are finished, they can go back to speaking their
preferred language to everyone who understands them. Which would suggest that these two
ideas should go hand in hand.
In order for a truly bilingual education system to work is to make sure that all teachers
are fluent in both English and the language they will be teaching. Which means that there
will be a demand for teachers that can speak either German, Italian, Russian, Chinese,
Japanese, French, Spanish. Then there will be the demand to those who can speak the local
languages. For example, Lakota is widely used on most Sioux reservations in the US, so
many parents may want their children to learn Lakota instead of Chinese. More money will
be needed to fund all of these language programs, since there will end up being course
listings as: Third Grade English, Third Grade Spanish, Third Grade Italian etc... There
will also be uneven classroom sizes because many parents in California will want their
children to learn Spanish resulting in a large Spanish class and a small Russian class,
if any at all. The idea of a truly bilingual education system is still a lot more
productive and beneficiary than the current bilingual system, but the truly bilingual
system is, truthfully, utopian in nature.