Darling 1 Essay Example For Students

Darling 1 Essay Heidi DarlingRyan WintersEnglish 10119 December, 2002Bilingual EducationThe debate over bilingual education is nothing if not emotional. Thetwo sides seem to be spurred on by political opinions from liberals andconservatives who want to further their own cause. In general terms, thatcause, in relation to bilingual education for liberals is that diverselanguages and customs enrich the U.S. cultural stew and should be allowedto flourish (Worsnap 6). Conservatives, on the other hand, believe thatthe mission of U.S. schools is to nurture a common language English anda common national identity (Worsnap 6). The issue over bilingual educationgoes back several decades, even a century, in Americas history. When thiscountry was founded, people came from around the globe to create a newplace to live in freedom and peace. So, from the very beginning of ournations inception, there has been a need to teach newcomers English. Atfirst this was accomplished by complete submersion. There were noprog rams set up by the government, only a strong desire by thoseimmigrants to become a part of their new country. Until the 1960s,interest in bilingual education was limited. Then public and politicalinterest increased when thousands of Cuban refugees started pouring intoSouth Florida after Fidel Castro gained power in 1959 (Dunlap 8). At thattime, Dade County (Miami) wanted to help arriving children to adjust totheir new country, so in 1963 they became the first county to begin anexperimental bilingual education program in first to third grades at theirCoral Way Elementary School (Dunlap 8). Because this experiment was deemeda success after just a few years, widespread support for bilingualeducation helped advocates persuade lawmakers to fund bilingual programsduring congressional hearings in 1967; and theyDarling 2were successful when by President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the propositionin January 1968 (Dunlap 8). The bilingual education act, adopted as TitleIIV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), made availablefederal money for bilingual programs. Although the act did not requirelocal school districts to establish bilingual programs, it did encouragetheir development by offering grants. In 1974 the act was broadened andclarified the federal role in bilingual education, and for the first time,federal money was made available for training teachers and developingcurricula and instructional materials (Dunlap 9). Bilingual education started out in 1968 as a modest $7.5 millionpilot program to help (immigrant) children learn English. Today its a $5billion boondoggle including federal, state and local funds that actuallyprevents kids from acquiring the language that will determine theireconomic and social success as adults, writes Rosalie Pesalino Porter,author of the 1990 book Forked Tongue: the Politics of Bilingual Educationand chairman of the Institute for Research in English Acquisition andDevelopment (READ) (qtd. in Worsnap 6). This opinion is shared by manyexperts in the field of bilingual education and also the side that I willdiscuss in depth in this paper. But first, what exactly is bilingualeducation and what different approaches are available to teach limitedEnglish proficient (LEP) students English?The definition of bilingual education is: instruction for those whodo not speak English, by teachers who use the students native language atleast part of the day. The term usually has me ant teaching students to befluent in two languages (Worsnap 3). There are four basic alternatives forinstructing LEP children. The first of these is immersion or sink orswim. In this model, the LEP child is placed in a regular Englishclassroom with English monolingual children and given no more special helpthan any child with educational problems (Rossell 19). A second techniqueis English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction, which consists ofregular classroom instruction for most of the day combined with a specialpull out program ofDarling 3English language instruction for one or two periods a day, or in somedistricts two or three periods per week, and participation in the regularclassroom for the rest of the time (Rossell 19). A third instructionaltechnique is structured immersion, where instruction is in the Englishlanguage in a self-contained classroom of LEP children. The English usedin these programs is always geared to the childrens language proficiencyat each stage so that it is comprehensible, and the student thus learns thesecond language (English) and subject matter content simultaneously(Rossell 19). The fourth instructional technique, transitional bilingualeducation (TBE), is when the student is taught to read and write in thenative tongue, with subject matter also taught in the native tongue. English is initially taught for only a small portion of the day. As thechild progresses in English, the amount of instructional time in the nativetongue is reduced and English increased, until the student is proficientenough in English to join the regular classroom. (Rossell 18) For mostpeople learning a new language, progress depends on two factors motivation and exposure to the new language, which means having theopportunity to understand it and use it for real purposes, said PatriciaWhitelaw-Hill, an ESL teacher for many years and executive director of theREAD Institute in Washington, D.C. (89). To this end, it is my opinionthat bilingual education is a waste of government money because it does notexpose LEP students to enough English for them to become proficient in antimely manner and because bilingual education fosters a sense of separationin stead of unity among students which transfers into our countrys lack ofunity. To begin with, I am against any more government money being spent onbilingual education because the current methods being used are taking toomany years to teach LEP students English. In America today, Transitionalbilingual education (TBE) is the most common approach for teachingimmigrants English in our schools. The majority of elementary schoolprograms have as their goal exiting a student after 3 years, saysChristine Rossell, a professor ofDarling 4political science at Boston University and co-author of Bilingual EducationReform in Massachusetts. But these programs also allow students to stayin the program longer than three years . . . Indeed, many children stay ina bilingual program throughout their elementary school career (19). Vegetarian (Health, Ethics And Environmetnal Effec EssayAdvocates of bilingual education say that their main goal is to teachEnglish to non-English-speaking children. But the truth is that theirprimary purpose is to perpetuate a seriously flawed teaching method so thatthe bureaucracy that supports it can sustain itself. Their livelihoodsdepend on promoting the myth that children taught in one language willlearn English, says Sally Peterson, founder and director of LEAD (LearningEnglish Advocates Drive). If these children ever do learn English, ittakes years (89). Advocates also claim that children need to be taught intheir native language because of self-esteem. But there is no evidencethat bilingual education has an impact on a students self worth (Peterson79). Why after 25 years cant bilingual education advocates silencetheir critics with overwhelming proof that native-language instructionworks? proposed Peterson. Her answer, They cannot, because the proofdoes not exist (79). Ano ther misconception by bilingual supporters isthat reading skills easily transfer from one language to another. This isonly true in certain limited cases. Being literate in one language meansyou have an understanding of what the reading process is about which is animportant first step. For different languages, however, different decodingstrategies are employed. The vowel systems in Spanish and English arequite different, and this causes a lot of initial difficulty in reading forSpanish speakers. (Guerrero 91)Darling 8Native-language-based bilingual education is a human tragedy ofnational proportions. Thousands of promising young people in publicschools are segregated for years by language. They fail to achieve theirpotential because they cannot compete in the educational mainstream,so in turn, they become discouraged and quit. (Peterson 79) Statisticsprove that when students are not proficient in English by high school thatdrop out rates increase dramatically. In a November 1989 popu lation studyby the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, they found thatonly 10.5 percent of English-speaking teens dropped out of high school incomparison to almost 50 percent of Spanish-speaking teens that have adifficulty with English (Amselle 112). Currently in the U.S., there areover two million LEP students in the public school system with more andmore moving here every year. Billions of federal, state and local dollarsare being spent on bilingual education programs that do not work. In 1992alone, over $5 billion dollars of state and local money was spent onbilingual education (Amselle 118). And what has been the result of thisgrand expenditure? Well, there are no results because there has been noaccountability set up to monitor bilingual education. Both California andMassachusetts, in state reports published in 1992 and 1994, admitted tothis failure (Porter 34). In addition, California, with 1.2 million LEPstudents also reported that teachers were not testing stu dents for exitfrom bilingual programs and keeping these children in bilingual classroomsyears beyond the point where they need special help (Porter 34). Bilingualeducation has grown tremendously from its modest start and currently some2.5 million children are eligible for bilingual or ESL classes (Chavez 10). According to Roth, 32 million Americans dont speak English and in justfive years, that number will rise to 40 million which when put inperspective means that one in seven homes, the inhabitants speak a foreignlanguage (13). For most of our nations history, America gave the childrenof immigrants a great gift an education in the English language. Whatare we doing now for these new Americans today? Instead of givingDarling 9them a first-rate education in English, our bilingual education programsare consigning an entire generation of new Americans unable to speak,understand, and use English effectively to a second-class future. (Roth13)Darling 10BibliographyWorsnap, Richard L. Bilingual Education. CQ Press. 1993. 18 Oct 2002. . . Donegan, Craig. Debate Over Bilingualism. CQ press. 1996. 18 Oct 2002. . . Rossell, Christine. Is Bilingual Education an Effective EducationalTool?. (p.18-28). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle,Jorge, Ed. Center for Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18Oct 2002. . . Baker, Keith. What Bilingual Education Research Tells Us. (p.29-32). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center forEqual Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . . Peterson, Sally. Breaking the Bilingual Lobbys Stranglehold. (p.78-84). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Centerfor Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . . Porter, Rosalie P. The Politics of Bilingual Education. (p.33-39). TheFailure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for EqualOpportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . . Alvarado, Miguel. One Parents Story. (p.96-97) The Failure ofBilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for EqualOpportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . . Darling 11Cornelius, Wayne A. Educating Californias Immigrant Children. (p.60-76).The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . . Guadarrama, Irma N. Realizing Democratic Ideals with BilingualEducation. (p.40-46). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle,Jorge, Ed. Center for Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18Oct 2002. . . Krashen, Stephen. Why Bilingual Education?. ERIC Digest . Charleston,WV. 1997. 18 Oct 2002.. . Roth, Rep. Toby. Bilingual Education and the Role of Government inPreserving Our Common Language. (p.13-16). The Failure of BilingualEducation. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . Chavez, Linda. One Nation, One Common Language. (p.7-12). The Failureof Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for EqualOpportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . Whitelaw-Hill, Patricia. Bilingual Education Alternatives. (p.88-92). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center forEqual Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . Amselle, Jorge, Comp. Index of Bilingual Education Statistics. (p. 111-123).The Failure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for Equal Opportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . Darling 12Porters, Alejandro and Richard Schauffler. Language and the SecondGeneration: Bilingualism Yesterday and Today. (p. 47-59). TheFailure of Bilingual Education. Amselle, Jorge, Ed. Center for EqualOpportunity. Washington, DC. 1995. 18 Oct 2002. . .