Bilingual Education in the United States

[jlbud...@hotmail.com]

In a Curriculum and Instruction course we are currently enrolled in at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we were asked to watch a number of
Usenet groups to find differing opinions about bilingual education in
the United States. We will use this information as a controversial
issue discussion in our class at a later date. We have taken the time
to compile the following sets of viewpoints. We'd greatly appreciate
any comments on the opinions we've posted or any other ideas that
would be useful to know (especially those that may not be fully
represented).

OPINIONS IN FAVOR OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION

· Bilingual education programs can not only effectively teach
English, but also effectively maintain the importance of the
student's native culture and language.
· Full immersion, combined with bilingual education, can really raise
the expectations of student performance and drive those students whose
native language is not English to learn it (important because they
desperately need English to succeed in the United States).
· Bilingual education provides vocabulary support for students unlike
that of an immersion program.
· Bilingual education paired with immersion leads to fluency.
· Immersion simply provides the illusion of fluency. The
conversational English that students learn in immersion programs is not
the same as the academic English found in textbooks, dictionaries, and
professional settings.

OPINIONS AGAINST BILINGUAL EDUCATION

· There is more emphasis placed on the "multicultural" aspect of
bilingual education and, therefore, students are not learning English
as fast or as proficiently as is believed to be necessary.
· School resources, like textbooks and teachers trained in providing
bilingual education, needed to provide bilingual education will take
money from the system (money that is already scarce).
· Bilingual education is generally limited to Spanish.
· Second language learners have an enormous amount of English
vocabulary to learn; some words that exist in English do not exist in
other languages and vice versa.
· "What is called "bilingual education" in this country is no
more than Spanish immersion students who go through the system fluent
in neither English (or Spanish actually) nor can they read and write
will. They tend to be semi-literate in two languages."
· Very few bilingual classrooms have children whose native language
is Spanish (or another language) and children whose native language is
English. So, who is the bilingual education really helping?
· Some parents of non-English speaking children are actually against
bilingual education because they believe that it does not teacher their
children the language fluently. They believe complete fluency is key
to the success of their children when trying to find jobs and thrive in
American society.