Bilingual education and racial relations
Bilingual education and racial relations
SIGNIFICANCE: Bilingual education usually involves the use of a minority and a majority language for teaching schoolchildren whose primary language is not English. Bilingual education combines language learning with teaching culture to meet the educational goals of different minority groups.
The debate surrounding bilingual education in the United States has a long and turbulent history. On June 2, 1998, voters in California ended the thirty-year-old tradition of bilingual education in California public schools by passing Proposition 227, which gives immigrant children only one year to learn English before they enroll in regular classes. The passage of this initiative and the courts’ response to the new law (which almost immediately became subject to court litigation) were seen as a critical test of the United States’ commitment to bilingual education; California, after all, represented the largest school system in the nation with the largest student population enrolled in bilingual classes. If California eliminated bilingual education, many other school systems in other states were hoping either to impose severe restrictions on bilingual instruction or to eliminate it totally by passing an English-only policy. In contrast, the Coral Way School in Miami, which became the United States’ first successful bilingual school in 1963, continued to offer a strong commitment to bilingual education. Although support was eroding in other parts of the United States, Miami support for bilingualism was gaining strength. These examples best represent the roller-coaster history of bilingual education.
Over the years, bilingual education has experienced a series of ups and downs as various immigrant groups have arrived in the United States. One of bilingual education’s most significant moments was the passage of the Bilingual Education Act in 1968. The act promoted bilingualism as a way to address the educational needs of children whose primary language is not English. In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols that a school district was required to provide bilingual education. Subsequent court decisions further highlighted the need for solid bilingual education programs as a means of providing equal access to education. However, many schools did not comply with this ruling. Bilingual education underwent a series of setbacks during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. By 1990, the tide was turning in favor of the English-only campaigns. The passing of Proposition 227 in California was intended to deliver the most severe blow yet to bilingual education in the United States. Regulations and policies concerning these issues have used many termslimited English proficient (LEP), English language learner (ELL), and English learner (EL)to refer to these students. However, the more inclusive term, emergent bilingual (EB), became the preferred term in the late 2010s. This language eliminated implied English dominance and emphasized the development of bilingual learning.
Maintenance vs. Transitional Bilingualism
The main problem that bilingual education attempts to address is how to respond to the need of minority children to learn the majority language, English. According to the US Department of Education, more than five million children in public schools EBs. If these children cannot understand the teacher, they cannot learn academic subjects like math, science, and reading. If their study of academic subjects is postponed until they are proficient in English, their progress in these subjects is seriously hampered. If the “sink-or-swim” approach is used and children are taught entirely in English, their performance in academic subjects will deteriorate. Bilingual education solves this problem by teaching academic subjects to EB children in their native languages while teaching them English. Furthermore, studies show that improving cognitive skills in native languages further facilitates the learning of academic subjects. However, studies such as those by Jim Cummins show that at least four to six years of instruction in native languages (called late-exit to English) are needed before optimal results are registered both on proficiency in English and on other subjects in terms of achieving or exceeding national norms.
Most bilingual programs in the United States can best be characterized as transitional bilingual programs because they encourage the maintenance of the native language as a transition toward the learning of English. This process is called subtractive bilingualism. In the first stage, students are monolingual, learning only in their native language. Then students enter a stage of transitional bilingualism, in which they are functional in both their native language and English. Finally, they become monolingual in English.
Maintenance programs are additive bilingual programs that maintain the students’ native language as they learn English. In the beginning, students are monolingual, speaking only their native language, then they begin to become bilingual, adding English to their native language. In the end, the students become fully functional in English yet maintain their native language.
Proponents of additive bilingual programs claim that maintenance of the student’s native language is critical for the child’s linguistic and cognitive growth, school performance, psychological security, ethnic and cultural identity, self-esteem, and many other positive personality and intellectual characteristics. The supporters of transitional bilingual programs claim that these programs avoid unnecessary linguistic duality and confusion, which sometimes cause children to be unable to function well in either language; improve students’ performance in school; and minimize social, ethnic, and political divisions. The latter view derives support from long-term bilingual programs that have been found to lack effectiveness. For example, in 1997, only 6.7 percent of LEP children moved into regular classes in California as compared with 15 percent in 1982. Other states exhibit the same trend, pointing to the low success rate of long-term bilingual programs aimed at maintaining both languages.
Advocates of maintenance bilingual programs attribute these low success rates to factors that are not intrinsic to bilingual education, such as a lack of funding, trained teachers, and federal/state commitment to bilingual education; poorly structured classrooms (grouping large numbers of students with diverse and unrelated native languages); and not enough adequate pedagogical material. According to Jim Lyons, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, a large number of bilingual programs are “not worthy of the name.” Programs such as the Eastman school model (pioneered by Steven Krashen and Cummins), which is widely used in Los Angeles schools, have shown themselves to be effective. The model is notable for its effective use of the results of basic research in modern theories of language acquisition and its long-term bilingual and bicultural basis. In the 2020s, over 3,600 dual language bilingual education programs were in use in forty-four states, teaching over four hundred languages.
Alternatives to Bilingual Education
Alternatives to bilingual programs generally take the shape of programs to teach children English. Instead of simply placing LEP children in ordinary classes, children are placed in English as a second language (ESL) or English language development (ELD) programs. The ELD approach follows a strategy that encourages students to first comprehend and then speak English. The lessons are delivered in a low-anxiety, small-group, and language-conducive environment. Students’ errors are tolerated, and the focus is on the acquisition of interactive communicative skills. The teacher provides what is termed “comprehensible input” (expressions in English that make sense to children) by means of role-playing, modeling, and pictures. After about six to twelve months of ELD instruction, a shift is made to “sheltered English” instruction, which includes simplified language with common vocabulary, frequent paraphrasing, clarification, comprehension checks, and the use of simple sentence structures to teach context-rich subjects such as art and music.
Researchers Keith A. Baker and Adriana A. de Kanter suggest the structured immersion program modeled after the St. Lambert French immersion program in Quebec as an alternative to bilingual education programs. However, the success of the Canadian program is attributed to community and parent support; the fact that language-majority students (English speakers) were immersed into a minority language (French); and that the program goals included additive bilingualism. Similarly structured immersion programs failed in the United States because they involved language-minority children, neglected their native language, and were based on subtractive bilingualism.
As political battles over bilingual education continue throughout the United States, the nation’s schools continue to implement and adapt programs to ensure all children receive an education. However, the best way to teach these children English remains uncertain.
Bibliography
Anderson, Jill. "How Schools Make Race." Harvard Graduate School of Education, 14 Nov. 2024, www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/24/11/how-schools-make-race. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Berliner, David C., and Gene V. Glass, editors. 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. Teachers College, Columbia UP, 2014.
Chávez-Moreno, Laura C. “The Continuum of Racial Literacies: Teacher Practices Countering Whitestream Bilingual Education.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 57, no. 2, 2022, pp. 108–32, doi.org/10.58680/rte202232151. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Elliot, Joseph. "Does Dual Language Bilingual Education Promote Equity?" Elmhurst University, www.elmhurst.edu/blog/does-dual-language-bilingual-education-promote-equity. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Freire, Juan A., et al. The Handbook of Dual Language Bilingual Education. Routledge, 2024.
Harry, Beth, and Janette K. Klingner. Why Are So Many Minority Students in Special Education? Understanding Race and Disability in Schools. 2nd ed., Teachers College/Columbia UP, 2014.
Levinson, Meira. No Citizen Left Behind. Harvard UP, 2012.
Mackey, William F. “Bilingual Education and Its Social Implications.” Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism, 1984, pp. 151–77, doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-232760-5.50013-3. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.
Rhodes, Jesse. An Education in Politics: The Origins and Evolution of No Child Left Behind. Cornell UP, 2012.
Tamez-Robledo, Nadia. "What Bilingual Education Reveals about Race in the U.S." Ed Surge, 21 Nov. 2024, www.edsurge.com/news/2024-11-21-what-bilingual-education-reveals-about-race-in-the-u-s. Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.