Does Bilingual Education Have Any Value for American Schools?
One of the most important issues in American educational policy is bilingual education. Once the stronghold of mostly well-meaning educators and administrators who fought to maintain the huge and expensive bureaucracy they had created, butut for years it has been under scrutiny by educators and concerned parents and is being replaced or cut back in many areas. A saner educational policy must replace it everywhere.
Bilingual education denies that children learn a second language most naturally and effectively if they begin at an early age, even though there is overwhelming proof in linguistic and cognitive research. Just one quote from neurophysiologist William H. Calvin in How Brains Think (1996) makes the point: "Asian immigrants who learn English as adults succeed with vocabulary and basic-word-order sentences but have greater difficulty with other [language] tasks than those who arrived as children easily master."
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_billing.html
(also discusses what’s good about bilingual ed.)
As former Representative Herman Badillo, America's first Hispanic Member of Congress, remarked last year, "To keep children in classes where their own native language is used in the hope that they will somehow make the transition to English after five or six years is unacceptable to us."
Some Hispanics consider Mr. Badillo a traitor for his criticism of them but if they can avoid taking the criticism personally, and read various sides of this controversy they will recognize that he is a man of courage who ought not be repudiated by the people he still serves by writing his book, "One Nation, One Standard." If you hate what he says, please continue to read negative criticism of him and his book, but also read the links below critically and decide for yourselves whether he disrespects Hispanic Culture in its entirety. Decide for yourselves whether teaching children whose first language is Spanish (or any other language) is a way of disparaging their culture or their intellect.
Perhaps you will decide that enforced and prolonged bilingual education is a disservice to all children of immigrants. Whatever you decide, please comment and voice your opinions.
Paper on failure of bilingual education education in CA and other states:
http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1028.shtml
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-boulet082101.shtml
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01212007/postopinion/postopbooks/one_america_postopbooks_john_fonte.htm
http://www.theamericanvoice.com/
http://vivirlatino.com/2006/12/19/herman-badillo-dises-his-own-kind.php
Bilingual education denies that children learn a second language most naturally and effectively if they begin at an early age, even though there is overwhelming proof in linguistic and cognitive research. Just one quote from neurophysiologist William H. Calvin in How Brains Think (1996) makes the point: "Asian immigrants who learn English as adults succeed with vocabulary and basic-word-order sentences but have greater difficulty with other [language] tasks than those who arrived as children easily master."
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_billing.html
(also discusses what’s good about bilingual ed.)
As former Representative Herman Badillo, America's first Hispanic Member of Congress, remarked last year, "To keep children in classes where their own native language is used in the hope that they will somehow make the transition to English after five or six years is unacceptable to us."
Some Hispanics consider Mr. Badillo a traitor for his criticism of them but if they can avoid taking the criticism personally, and read various sides of this controversy they will recognize that he is a man of courage who ought not be repudiated by the people he still serves by writing his book, "One Nation, One Standard." If you hate what he says, please continue to read negative criticism of him and his book, but also read the links below critically and decide for yourselves whether he disrespects Hispanic Culture in its entirety. Decide for yourselves whether teaching children whose first language is Spanish (or any other language) is a way of disparaging their culture or their intellect.
Perhaps you will decide that enforced and prolonged bilingual education is a disservice to all children of immigrants. Whatever you decide, please comment and voice your opinions.
Paper on failure of bilingual education education in CA and other states:
http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1028.shtml
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-boulet082101.shtml
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01212007/postopinion/postopbooks/one_america_postopbooks_john_fonte.htm
http://www.theamericanvoice.com/
http://vivirlatino.com/2006/12/19/herman-badillo-dises-his-own-kind.php
Labels: Americanization, Assimilation, Bilingual Education in the United States, Herman Badillo
1 Comments:
I've just read all your posts and enjoyed reading your opinions. I agree with you a lot. Maybe the internet will help some of those Muslim women (and other suppressed and gagged citizens) speak out. We can only hope. Incidentally tomorrow I am adding another post about interval exercise.
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