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March 24, 2004
Bilingual
Education out – English in.
By Domingo Ivan
Casañas
Last year I wrote an
article about ESL (English as a second
language) for the high school students.
As I do more research and remembering my
own experience of arriving in this
country without any English proficiency I
must try to understand in what way has
bilingual education help our
Spanish-speaking children. It was
back in 1974 when the Supreme Court in
Lau v. Nichols ignored two hundred years
of English-only instruction in America’s
schools and said that students who did
not speak English must receive special
treatment from local schools. This
ruling allowed an enormous expansion of
bilingual education. Within a short
time bilingual education had turned into
a massive political pork barrel.
I strongly feel that
a newcomer to our country who does not
know any English does need help in
learning the basics via an English
immersion program before being placed in
an English-only classroom like the ESL
program does. It is my opinion that
Bilingual education might have gained
wider acceptance and lower dropout rates
for Latinos if its advocates had been
content to describe bilingual education
as no more than a transitional bridge to
assimilation. However the advocated
were looking to get larger grants from
federal and state programs as well as
higher salaries for the bilingual
teachers. And they did not stop
there; one of their missions was to make
it their task to maintain the immigrant’s
cultural heritage. An endeavor that
should be left to parents, churches and
the extended family.
We must remember and
believe in our hearts as parents that our
Hispanic children have some very positive
values. They appreciated their
grandparents, they respect their fathers
as the supreme court of discipline, and
they love their mothers. They have
goals for their future, they aspire to
better jobs than their parents held, and
they are optimistic. So why then
should they be taught in Spanish 40to 80
percent of the time? It is us the
parents who need to have our children
learn the Spanish language and practice
it at home and with friends.
As parents what the majority of us want
is to see our children learn the English
language as soon as possible and start on
their educational challenge to apply
themselves and get good grades so that
they can possibly attend college. Above
all, learning begins at home; the parents’
values are more important than the
pedagogues’.
As parents of Latino
children born in the United States of
America, it is our duty not to teach our
children that it is all about your color
of skin or your native tongue, and we
must not turn “Anglo” color and
racial prejudice into a single-cause
explanation of social ills. Racial
prejudice assuredly exists in the United
States, as it exists everywhere else
including our own homelands.
Racial prejudice,
however, is crisscrossed by class
prejudice and above all, by prejudice
linked to the facts of ethnic succession.
The most unpopular people in America are
usually those who have arrived in some
numbers and last in this country—not
necessarily the most dark-complexioned.
Our Latino children need their own
parents to be educated, to know the
English language so that they may play a
role in their own children’s
education.
We must help with
homework, buy books, and lavishly praise
good grades, and castigate a child that
is sent home from school after a fight.
Such children will have a better chance
than youngsters from a home where the
television and stereo blare, where books
are scarce, where their own parents are
hoping that they won’t go to college
so that they can help out the family&
where there is no supervision in their
Internet activities Our children need
parents that encourage them, parents that
instill moral values on them, and parents
that Pray with them. The teachers
can help reinforce the values of the
home, but they cannot be expected to do
the parents’ work. Schools
should be responsible for creating an
environment that supports high
expectations and has a clear focus and a
strong instructional leadership that
offers incentives to learning and promote
academic excellence will all children no
matter how poor or how rich or what
accent they speak with.
Knowledge of English
is an acquired, not an inherent, skill—anyone,
white, black or brown, can learn English.
Immigrants that are not ignorant line up
to learn English because they believe
that learning English will improve their
prospects and it does, significantly.
English is the most widely used language
in history. English is the language
of science, technology, diplomacy,
international trade and commerce. One
half of Europe’s business is carried
out in English, and more than 67% percent
of the world’s scientists read
English. Most of the Internet users
mostly communicate in English. English
literacy is the key to success in the
United States. By not having
Bilingual education does not mean our
children won’t be bilingual.
Bilingual education also defeats efforts
to assimilate children into the U.S.
society. It is my opinion that one
to two years of sheltered English
immersion, followed with regular
classrooms is the real key, this is how I
was taught when I arrived from Cuba when
I was eight years old and it only took
one year in my case. My Spanish was
reinforced at home and I am Fluent in
both languages, writing, reading and
speaking.
I think most people
including Hispanics would agree with me
that (except bilingual teachers,
administrators, and multiculturists who
want not only language training but also
cultural maintenance) bilingualism in
school does not work. Our
goal as Latino’s is not to create
the problem that Canada has and form
little Quebec’s in states like
California, New York, Texas and Florida.
We cannot allow children with Spanish
surnames to be forced into bilingual
classes just to meet school goals, and we
must remember that Bilingual teachers are
in short supply, so at times teachers are
hired who have no teacher training but
speak Spanish or some language other than
English. Which results in poor
teaching and little or no
English-language teaching.
I conclude by
pointing out that the evidence is
overwhelming: bilingualism in
school does not work, is expensive, is
divisive, and ill serves Spanish speakers
to advance and compete in American
Society.
______________________________________________
Domingo Ivan
Casañas, a contributing columnist to
HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com)
is a Cuban born columnist for the Ledger
Dispatch newspaper, which is the East
Contra Costa edition of the Contra Costa
Times in California. Email address: LatinoAchievers@aol.com
or write to: P.O. Box 8427, Pittsburg, CA
94565
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