Educational Issues Series The Language of Education The Bilingual Education Controversy

By Bob Peterson

When I hear people complain about bilingual programs in our public schools, I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. Actually sometimes I do both. The sources of the criticisms run the gamut _ from virulent white supremacists who would prefer a white, Christian, English-only nation to Hispanics who have struggled to enter the English-speaking world and feel strongly that bilingual programs do a disservice to their children.

What I have found about all such criticisms and, quite frankly, about much of the praise for bilingual programs is that many opinions on the subject are based on very little knowledge about language acquisition of children or about the socio-economic context in which such programs exist.

As a teacher in the bilingual Spanish/English program in the Milwaukee public schools for the past thirteen years, I have come to recognize the issue for what it is: complicated, political, and above all else a necessary one for our nation to confront.

In this article I examine the history of bilingual education, common types of bilingual programs, and some of the common misconceptions about bilingual education. I also argue that certain types of bilingual programs are exactly the kind of programs that will help move our country forward in terms of race and language.

A Long History

An interesting place to start with bilingual programs is that of history. Few people realize that there is a long history of bilingual education programs in our nation's history (Crawford, 1989). During the second half of the 19th century, for example, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Czech, French, and Spanish were all taught in public schools either in a monolingual or bilingual setting in various states. (Kloss, 1977). The most valiant and sustained struggles for bilingual education were waged by three language groups: the German-Americans, Native-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Tyack (1974) says that in the Midwest in 1900 there were 231,700 children studying in German in public elementary schools, concentrated heavily in the public school systems of Ohio and Indiana. Garcia (1982) says that although "German-Americans fought vigorously for bilingual-bicultural instruction," their struggle failed because the "German nation has twice in this century been the political enemy of the US government." This in turn brought a wave of nativism, anti-bilingual and anti-foreign language legislation, and outright repression against German foreign language schools, press, and cultural institutions.

The best, but not the only example of how Native Americans fought for bilingual education and the preservation of their own culture, was the story of the Cherokee Nation. Between 1822, when the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah invented a Cherokee syllabary, and 1906, when the Federal Government took over control of tribal schools, the Oklahoma Cherokee Nation built an impressive bilingual school system. The system had eight districts and over 200 schools and academies, including a normal school and a system of higher education. In 1833 missionaries on the spot estimated "that three-fifths of the Cherokees were literate in their own language and one-fifth in English" (Weinberg, 1977; Crawford, 1989). Payne (1984) quotes later sources giving a 90% literacy rate. One historian (quoted in Weinberg, 1977) wrote that "the Cherokee Nation had a better common school system than either Arkansas or Missouri," the two neighboring states.

The Mexican-American struggle centered in the Southwest, particularly in New Mexico which had historically had a strong Spanish influence due to a concentration of settlers directly from Spain. The New Mexican constitution stipulated that teachers be trained in Spanish for purposes of teaching Spanish-speaking students. This, however, was not generally followed, and in fact Spanish was eventually prohibited in all public institutions including schools (Garcia, 1982).

The wave of "new immigrants" at the turn of the century, the growth of nativism, the Spanish-American-Cuban war, and two World Wars all contributed to a virtual cessation of bilingual education, and for the most part, foreign language instruction, in the USA.

Recent Bilingual Programs

It was only after the large scale migration of middle and upper class Cubans _fleeing the successful 1959 Cuban revolution_that bilingual education got placed back on our nation's educational agenda. After starting private local schools in Florida to maintain their language and culture, the Cubans sought to influence the local school systems and succeeded in setting up the first bilingual public school and program in modern times in the United States.

The initiative of the Cubans, combined with the general stirring of civil rights and ethnic consciousness among all Spanish-speaking North Americans, ushered in a new period for language instruction in the USA. Dramatic increases in immigration from throughout the world in the last two decades have further propelled the issue of education of students whose first language is not English into the national limelight.

During much of the twentieth century the main method for education of language minority or "limited English proficient" (LEP) children in the USA was the "submersion" or "sink and swim" approach to language instruction. In this approach the students are placed in a regular classroom and expected to "absorb" the second language. "The more one is exposed to a language, the quicker one will learn it" is the seemingly common-sense rationale that supports this approach.

Upon closer reflection, however, this is not the case. Try learning a foreign language by listening to a radio broadcast in that language. It doesn't work. What is needed is not just exposure to a second language, but "comprehensible input," i.e., language that is understandable to the learner at the level they are at. In sink or swim situations that rarely exists, but it is a key instructional point with any second language learner_whether in a regular, bilingual or English as a Second Language pull out program.

Educational researcher Hernandez-Chavez (1984) charges that the effects of traditional submersion model were, and are "extremely damaging" both because of "feelings of inferiority" the model engendered on the part of the student and due to the fact that "by the time these children can function in English sufficiently well to receive instruction they are far behind their classmates."

In the midst of the social unrest of the 1960s and in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, parents and advocates for language minority students spoke out against the traditional "sink or swim" approach and organized in favor of bilingual education. Their efforts proved successful. The Congress passed the Bilingual Act of 1968 which represented "the first national acknowledgment of special education needs of children of limited English proficiency" (Ovando and Collier, 1985).

The goal of the act has remained unchanged despite the amendments of 1974 and 1978: the teaching of English using the native language of the child as a medium. The act provided funding for bilingual programs and shaped future policy decisions. The appropriateness of this law was confirmed by the 1974 Supreme Court decision in the Chinese parents' Lau vs. Nichols (414 U.S. 563, 1974) case in California. The Court ruled that instruction only in English, without providing special classes for students not proficient in English, deprived the students of an understanding of the curriculum and an equal opportunity in education.

According to two scholars in the field, although the Lau decision, based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, "did not expressly endorse bilingual education, [it] . . . legitimized and gave impetus to the movement for equal education opportunity for students who do not speak English. Lau raised the nation's consciousness of the need for bilingual education, encouraged additional federal legislation, energized federal enforcement efforts, led to federal funding of nine regional `general assistance Lau centers,' aided the passage of state laws mandating bilingual education, and spawned more law suits" (Teitelbaum and Hiller, 1977).

The subsequent Lau Guidelines and the array of state legislation in support of distinct educational programs for limited English students further encouraged the development of this authentic educational reform (for an excellent review of the related litigation see Baez, Fernandez, Navarro and Rice, 1984).

Wisconsin Connection

In Wisconsin the first bilingual program in recent times was established at Milwaukee's Vieau Elemen itional bilingual approach is the most common approach in the nation, used in approximately 80% of the districts where bilingual programs exist (Kjolseth, 1982). In such programs children are taught all subjects in their native language while they learn English as a second language. Techniques vary as to how instruction is conducted in such classrooms, with methods including one day in English/one day in Spanish approaches, mornings in one language and afternoons in the other, etc. Once a student is considered proficient in English the student is exited from the program and moved into a monolingual English classroom. The advantages of this approach are two-fold. First, students don't fall behind in academic areas because instruction is made understandable to them, i.e., it is in their native language. Secondly, students are likely to develop reading skills more rapidly because they already have an oral vocabulary of a couple thousand words. Research indicates there are several advantages for children to begin reading in their native language (Snow, 1990; Thonis, 1993). The child's already existing oral vocabulary assists in acquisition of reading skills, and these skills are transferable to the second language, in this case English.

There are a number of drawbacks to the transitional approach, however. Often such a program is viewed as compensatory by the school staff with resultant low expectations (Kjolseth, 1982). The long term goal is not so much the development of a bilingual student, but rather replacing the student's native language with English. In the transitional model the native language is utilized as a stepping stone to English, but full literacy in that language is not seen as an objective worthwhile for the school to pursue. In such programs students are often transitioned out of the bilingual classroom after a couple of years of instruction (usually any where from the beginning of second grade through third grade) before the child is fully prepared to function academically in a monolingual English classroom.

Canadian bilingual education expert, Jim Cummins has shown in his research study of French Canadian students learning English that it generally takes five to seven years of work in the child's native language before a student can be successfully "transitioned" to a monolingual classroom. He has made a distinction between two types of knowledge of a language: basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cogtary School in 1969 in response to requests by members of Milwaukee's Hispanic community. A few years later community organizations and activists came together to form the City-Wide Bilingual Bicultural Advisory Committee, which was recognized by the Milwaukee Board of School Directors "as the official advisory board for bilingual bicultural education within Milwaukee Public Schools on all matters related to Hispanics" (Baez, Fernandez, & Guskin, 1980). Hispanic activists continued organizing and succeeded in March of 1976 to get the state to pass the Wisconsin Bilingual Bicultural Act, the first law in Wisconsin's history that had been passed at the urging of Hispanic communities throughout Wisconsin. The act mandated bilingual education for grades K-8 and provided 70% of the cost of educating limited-English-speaking-ability students. The financial incentive propelled even the conservative-dominated Milwaukee school board to expand the bilingual program. Programs in Racine began as well. As in other parts of the country, however, the programs weren't all the same.

Comparing different bilingual programs

Bilingual programs can be divided into several different kinds: English as a second language (ESL), transitional, maintenance, restorative, and immersion. The first two approaches are part of the post W.W.II compensatory approach to meeting the educational needs of language minorities, based on the assumption that children have a language deficit.

ESL approaches when used by themselves are not bilingual programs, but since they are usually used as a component of other bilingual models I mention them here. ESL is based on the belief that language minority students benefit from small group instruction in English language, provided for by trained, second language teachers. All bilingual teachers use ESL strategies inside their classroom, but how ESL programs are structured varies greatly from district to district. Some schools have only ESL and no bilingual classes because the district has neither the interest or the resources to develop a full bilingual program. In other schools, ESL programs exist because there are language minority students from several different language groups, all in need of special services. In many schools ESL is a pullout program where students get concentrated practice in small groups outside of the regular classroom setting. The students may or may not be grouped homogeneously and teachers may or may not be sensitive to the native culture and language.

Transitional Bilingual Programs

The trans nitive-academic language proficiency (CALP). BICS are acquired more rapidly and insufficiently trained teachers can easily mistake playground talk and classroom requests for adequate proficiency in the second language. Academic success for language minority students, however, will ultimately mean understanding English and concepts in decontextualized, more textbook type settings, and this is what is meant by CALP. Cummins (1981a) Cummins concludes: "while conversational abilities may be acquired fairly rapidly in a second language, upwards of five years are usually required for second language learners to attain grade norms in academically-related aspects of the second language (Collier, 1987, Cummins, 1981b, 1993).

Thus the very advantages of the transitional bilingual program _ initial mother tongue instruction and teaching subject matter in a language that is comprehensible_are its disadvantages. The transitional program stops years before a child can actually benefit from this instruction.

Maintenance or Enrichment Bilingual Programs

Cummin's critique of transitional programs is a strong rationale for maintenance or enrichment programs. The objectives of such programs are twofold: the sustained teaching of the first and second language. The goals are biliteracy, and bilingualism, and bi- if not multi-culturalism. In a maintenance program like that in Milwaukee, Spanish is used not only to make instruction understandable, but also to develop and maintain the first language of the child. Thus in such programs curricula is presented in both languages as the child moves through school, although initially instruction is presented predominantly in the dominant language of the child. The advantages of this model are that it does not force a premature transfer of children into monolingual classrooms, and it further develops the native language of the child. It's the only program that truly develops both languages and has as it's long term goal bilingualism and biliteracy. This goal puts it on par with some of the most prestigious school programs throughout the world.

The instructional disadvantages include the fact that even in districts that use a maintenance model, the availability of bilingual instruction is usually more limited after grade school. This means limited-English students who arrived midway through their elementary career might not be sufficiently prepared to perform academically in an exclusively English setting, and it also means that students who are bilingual by the end of elementary school might not continue to be challenged to develop their native language skills.

Another difficulty with this approach is that in the upper elementary grades and above, it is difficult if not impossible to cover all the curricula in two languages. This is not a problem if all children are bilingual _ as then some subjects can be taught in one language while another subject is taught in the second language. But most bilingual classrooms receive a continuous flow of new immigrant students, many of whom do not speak English, making instruction more complicated.

A final problem with this approach is that it tends to encourage segregation in schools and classrooms on the basis of language, which often times corresponds to race as well. Thus in some schools in Milwaukee the bilingual classrooms are almost exclusively children of Hispanic origin, while the monolingual English classrooms are predominantly African-American.

Two-way Bilingual Programs

Bilingual maintenance or enrichment programs are also available in some districts for speakers of English. In Milwaukee, at La Escuela Fratney, children who are English speakers (of all races) learn Spanish while Spanish-speaking students learn English. These "two-way bilingual programs" are growing in popularity in the USA as some English speaking people recognize the advantage of children learning another language at an early age (Christian, 1994). How literacy instruction is approached in these two-way bilingual programs varies but the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy are similar to maintenance bilingual programs. Often times these two-way programs are multiracial and emphasize a multicultural approach to the curriculum (Peterson, 1993).

Restoration Bilingual Programs

Restoration approaches are similar to the maintenance models but the purpose is to "restore or recover a language and culture that has been lost, stolen or strayed" (Garcia, 1982). Example of these types include the Window Rock Arizona Navajo bilingual program and the Cherokee, Choctaw and the Seminole bilingual programs.

Immersion Programs

An immersion program involves "children from the linguistic majority of a country (with a high status mother tongue) choosing to be taught through the medium of a foreign language" (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). This is the principal bilingual model for Canada's English speaking children. Started in 1965, it has spread to all provinces with more than 20% of all English speaking children in Montreal and Ottawa participating. The children are completely instructed in French, their second language, and only begin English instruction after they have begun reading in French. By fourth or fifth grade, instruction is half in one language and half in the other. It is considered a program of "enrichment bilingualism." The Canadian experience is particularly important because it has been thoroughly evaluated and shown to be successful in the development of bilingual children (Lambert and Tucker, 1972). Another finding from the Canadian experience that is particularly interesting given the racial problems confronting the USA, is that the learning of a second language by these majority children produced a "more liberal and enlightened perception of other ethnic groups" (McLaughlin, 1978; Lambert & Tucker, 1972). This is not surprising given the interconnectedness of language and culture.

Milwaukee Public Schools has three immersion elementary schools (French, German and Spanish) and one immersion middle school that uses all three languages.

Bilingual Education Under Attack

Bilingual education has always had its critics, but recently it has come under particularly intense attacks from conservatives, including the Republican party, private groups such as US English, and conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich devoted an entire chapter of his book, To Renew America, to the alleged failings of bilingual education. In September of 1995 Sen. Robert Dole made a high-profile denunciation of multilingual education. Wisconsin's own Toby Roth (D-Green Bay), an author of "English-only" legislation, has called for the elimination of all bilingual education programs (Amselle, 1996).

The criticisms are set in the context of two concurrent political trends: increasing attacks on public education programs, especially those for poor and minority children and increasing attacks on the rights of immigrants or those perceived as immigrants in our country. For example, California's Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant rights referendum, approved by a 3 to 2 margin in 1994, prohibits, among other things, providing education to "illegal" immigrant children in the state (De La Torre, 1994a). This provision was included in the referendum even though in 1982 the US Supreme Court found in the Plyler v. Doe decision that a Texas law that prohibited undocumented immigrant children from attending public school to be unlawful because it violated the students' equal protection rights under the constitution (De La Torre, 1994b). Several provisions of Proposition 187, including those affecting education, are still being litigated in court.

Most criticisms of bilingual education fail to take into account the rights of language minority students as expressed in the Lau and Plyler decisions or differences within bilingual programs as described above.

The pedagogical criticism

"If they spent more time listening and doing things in English, they'd learn English quicker."

While this statement has a certain common sense appeal, the fact is that research shows that continued development of both languages enhances cognitive development (Cummins, 1989, Lindholm and Zierlein, 1991). Children continue to learn in subject areas in a language that is understandable to them while they learn English.

Moreover, many literacy-related skills are transferable from one language to another (Cummins, 1993). Research shows that students who immigrate from Spanish-speaking countries who were well educated in their native language of Spanish can learn English literacy skills much more rapidly and better than US-born children who speak Spanish at home, but did not participate in a bilingual educational setting (Nieto, 1993). My personal experience with 5th graders confirms both these points. The students who have a solid literacy background as Spanish readers and writers, can fairly quickly become good English readers and writers.

The lousy program criticism

"Some Latino kids are put in to lousy bilingual programs and they aren't learning."

Among the anti-bilingual literature one often encounters the personal stories of some parent in Texas or California (Amselle, 1996) who has been treated poorly and whose child has met no success in a bilingual program. Upon closer scrutiny many such criti cisms have little to do with the fact that the program is bilingual but more to do with the fact that the school district didn't adequately inform or listen to the parent. Bilingual programs are intended to be optional and parents must give their permission for their children to participate in them.

Moreover, the range of quality in bilingual classrooms and programs varies _ just as the range of quality varies in all other educational programs. At times a lack of resources, a shortage of well trained bilingual teachers, or ineffective instructional strategies can hurt bilingual programs. But just because one can find incidents where students and families did not find satisfaction with a particular program, doesn't mean we eliminate the program, but rather we improve it.

The "We made it_so can they" criticism

"But other immigrants didn't need bilingual education and they made it."

Most people who make this statement don't know that the USA has a long history of bilingual education programs. Some immigrants, particularly Germans, definitely promoted and benefited from such programs.

Nonetheless, it is true that many immigrants "made it" without being part of bilingual educational programs. So why are such programs so necessary now?

The key to understanding the difference, however, is not educational, but economic. The economic realities that earlier immigrants and current immigrants face are quite different. In the early 1900's during the first great wave of immigration the economic conditions allowed first generation immigrants, albeit with some difficulty depending on their country of origin, to get relatively decent paying (at times union) jobs that would help their families and their children move into a more secure financial existence without an extensive knowledge of English. People who argue against bilingual education and other immigrant rights today by saying that "previous immigrants made it" are not taking into account the dramatically different economic situation in this country. Today, with the decline of manufacturing, the likelihood of securing a family-supporting job without extensive knowledge of English is doubtful.

In other words, because of today's economic conditions, bilingual education programs are needed by LEP children because through them they will learn English better than if they didn't participate in such programs.

Real Problems in Bilingual Programs

Like other educational programs, bilingual programs can definitely be improved. They suffer from large class sizes, lack of funding, insufficient staff development, etc. that many educational programs face these days.

There are some problems particular to bilingual programs, however. One is that most programs are transitional and not enrichment. In other words, children are pushed out of bilingual programs often after first or second grade. The students have what appears to be classroom fluency in English, but they can't really operate in more cognitively-challenging and text-dominated settings of upper elementary school. More districts would do well to emulate programs in Milwaukee which seek to maintain both languages by having children participate in bilingual educational settings throughout elementary school and into middle and high school if they so choose.

The problem of large class sizes, while a problem for all teachers and students, is a particularly problematic one for bilingual classrooms. Most of these classrooms are in under-funded, urban settings and begin with large classes. Having immigrant children who may not speak any English in one's class necessitates more one-on-one and small group work, and thus is a further argument for smaller class sizes. Unfortunately, with budget caps and cutbacks, the prospect for change on that front is not too likely.

Another criticism that has been raised about bilingual programs is that they have a segregating effect _putting many children of one race, most often Hispanic, into separate classrooms. In addressing this problem, educators have to balance the needs of those children for intense language instruction (in either their native language or English) and the negative effects of segregation. Perhaps the best way to overcome this dilemma is the creation of more two-way bilingual programs where children of all races are integrated into classrooms where they learn two languages.

Conclusion

Whatever the outcome of the current political debates over language issues, teachers will always face the classroom dilemma of how to best educate children who speak languages other than English. As teachers we know what is best for those students _ which is what is best for all children _ build on the child's strengths, have high expectations for all, and fight like the dickens for the rights of all children.

References:

Amselle, J. (1996). The Failure of Bilingual Education. Washington DC: Center for Equal Opportunity.

Baez, T., Fernandez, R., Navarro, R. and Rice, R. (1984). Litigation strategies for education equity and research. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the America Educational Research Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, April, 1984.

Collier, V. (1987). Age and rate of acquisition of second language for academic purposes. TESOL Quarterly, vol. 1, pp 617-41.

Cummins, J. (1981a) The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In California State Department of Education (1981) Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework. Los Angeles: National Dissemination and Assessment Center.

Cummins, J. (1981b) Age on arrival and immigrant second language learning in Canada: A reassessment. Applied Linguistics, vol. 2, pp. 132-49.

Cummins, J. (1993). Empowerment through biliteracy. In Tinajero, J.V. and Ada, A.F. ed.(1993). The Power of Two Languages: Literacy and biliteracy for Spanish-speaking students. New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Co.

Christian, D (1994). Two-way bilingual education: Students learning through two languages. Washington DC: US Department of Education, National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.

Crawford, J. Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory, and Practice. Trenton, NJ: Crane Publishing Company.

De La Torre, Felix (1994a). Will Proposition 187 Fuel National Backlash? In Rethinking Schools, Vol. 9, No. 2, p. 6.

Garcia, R (1982). Teaching in a pluralistic society, concepts, models and strategies. New York: Harper and Row.

Hernandez-Chavez, E. (1984). The inadequacy of English immersion education as an educational approach for language minority students in the United States. In California State Department of Education (Ed.), Studies on Immersion Education. Sacramento: California State Department of Education.

Kjolseth, R. (1982). Bilingual education programs in the United States: For assimilation or pluralism? In P.R. Turner (Ed.) Bilingual in the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Kloss, H. (1977). The American bilingual tradition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Lambert, W.E. & Tucker, G.R. (1972). Bilingual education of children: The St. Lambert experiment. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Pub.

Linholm, K.J., and Zierlein, A. (1991). Bilingual proficiency as a bridge to academic achievement: Results from bilingual/immersion programs. Journal of Education, vol. 173, pp 99- 103.

McLaughlin, (1978). Second-language acquisition in childhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Nieto (1993). We speak in many tongues: Language diversity and multicultural education. In Tinajero, J.V. and Ada, A.F. ed.(1993). The Power of Two Languages: Literacy and biliteracy for Spanish-speaking students. New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Co.

Ovando, C. and Collier, V. (1985). Bilingual and ESL classrooms: Teaching in multicultural contexts. New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company.

Payne, C. (1984). Multicultural education and racism in American schools. Theory into Practice, 33 (2), pp. 124-131.

Peterson, B. (1993) Creating a School that Honors the Traditions of a Culturally Diverse Student Body: La Escuela Fratney, in Public Schools that Work: Creating Community, Smith, G.A. ed., NY: Routledge. pp 45-67.

Skuthnabb-Kangas, T. (1981). Bilingualism or not: The education of minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Snow, C.E. (1990). Rationales for native language instruction. In Padilla, A.M., Fairchild, H.H., and Valadez, C.M. (Eds.), Bilingual education: Issues and strategies, pp. 60-74. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Teitelbaum, H. & Miller, R.J. (1977). Bilingual education: The legal mandate. Harvard Education Review, 47 (2), pp. 138-70.

Thonis, E. (1993). Reading Begins in the Crib. In Tinajero, J.V. and Ada, A.F. ed.(1993). The Power of Two Languages: Literacy and biliteracy for Spanish-speaking students. New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Co.

Tinajero, J.V. and Ada, A.F. ed.(1993). The Power of Two Languages: Literacy and biliteracy for Spanish-speaking students. New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Co.

Tyack, D. (1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Weinberg, M. (1977). A chance to learn: The history of race and education in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Posted July11, 1997