Bilingual education debate

A detailed Summary of Bilingual education debate

Bilingual Education: Don't shut the doors of knowledge

In The United States, foreign students from various minority groups are often placed at a disadvantage in schooling because their Native Language is not English. As a result a Bilingual education system was devised by the government to help the "disadvantaged" in 1968 under the Bilingual Education Act. In an essay written by Diane Ravitch called "Does Bilingual Education Make Sense?" she argues that Bilingual Education in the United States has been a dismal failure. In addition, she also believes that a new system of "structured immersion" would better suit the needs of these foreign students. I disagree with Ravitch for several reasons. To begin with I feel that Bilingual education is needed to help students keep up with others who are not disadvantaged. Another reason is that I believe that the current bilingual education system gives sufficient opportunity for students who want to learn English. Finally I feel that the immersion system would only be useful to stud!

ents who are exposed to English on a regular bases after attending the immersion program.

The major disadvantage for foreign students can be illustrated by a simple exercise. Try picking up a gr

live there are not exposed to English outside of the classroom. As one can imagine this has a great effect on the ability for one to become fluent in the English language. Therefore the statistics misrepresent the ability of Bilingual education to help students assimilate into an English speaking society and reinforces the idea that language is not taught in the classroom.

adutate course biology book and flip to chapter located toward the end of the book. Now read a few lines of text. Unless you are a person of extraordinarily rare intelligence or you are highly knowledgeable in biology than you have just delved into a small part of academic life of a foreign student without bilingual education. Foreign students are hindered by the problem that you had just experienced; they don't have the knowledge of a particular jargon to fully comprehend the material. Therefore without bilingual education students who are disadvantaged become secluded and unsuccessful. Many get frustrated because of this and end up losing a lot of confidence. As a result programs like bilingual education are needed in order to help foreign students keep up with others in their studies. The base for these programs is simple: Stress the learning of English and te!

Another statistic that is used in Ravitch's argument is that 90 percent of the students in New York who started bilingual education in the sixth grade where unable to pass an English - language test after three years of bilingual instruction. There are two problems with this statistic. The first problem is that students who s

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Approximate Word count = 1070
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science