One of the Problems with Bilingual Education

I've always had issues with bilingual ed programs. It always seemed that they acted as a bit of a crutch for kids that needed to be mainstreamed, a system where they could learn in their own language and never have to step too terribly far outside their own linguistic comfort zone to learn English.

I certainly do think that a short-term bilingual program designed to help kids find a quick route to functional English is a reasonable concept for schools. The only question being the best way to implement the concept.

Massachusetts has found the problem inherent in the system, though.

Recently, Massachusetts began to require that bilingual ed teachers should be tested for their own functional English skills. According to Rich Lowry, if they were students, the majority of them would have flunked.

Critics of bilingual education have long contended that rather than -- as advertised -- a way to ease immigrants into instruction in English, it constitutes an educational ghetto where students are taught in their native tongues and are kept from learning in English. The fluency debacle in Massachusetts is a stark demonstration of this critique.

In Somerville, Mass., the five bilingual teachers who took the test failed. In Lowell, 22 of 25 teachers failed. In Lawrence, 27 out of 31 teachers failed. The widespread failure to pass the test is a sign that bilingual education is a misnomer. It is really monolingual education, in any language but English.

Of course, the teachers who failed have filed lawsuits contending that the requirement for English fluency is discriminatory. I'll ignore that lawsuit except it flies in the face of all reasonable expectations of what should be expected of teachers who are supposed to be teaching kids to function in English-speaking classrooms.

What I will note, though, is that while California's English immersion program has been interpreted either as a remarkable success or a terrific failure, at least the program does move kids towards speaking English. If the bilingual ed teacher can't speak or write functionally, they will most certainly not be able to teach the kids.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at August 12, 2003 08:57 PM | TrackBack