Bilingual Education

A detailed Summary of 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 w

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.

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 Engli

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Approximate Word count = 1178
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics