Bilingual Is Better by Ana L. Flores

Author:Ana L. Flores [Flores, Ana L.; Soto, Roxana A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788492968220
Publisher: Bilingual Readers

Bilingual education throughout the last three centuries has been a focal point of political discussion centered around civil rights issues, and speaking any language other than English was even identified as a “threat to national unity that increased the risk of insurrection and terrorism” during World War I and II. In this sense, the original purpose of bilingual education was to integrate and assimilate newly arrived immigrants to help them learn English as quickly as possible. There’s an enduring conflict among those who believe that to become truly American, you must strip yourself of your language, customs and heritage and those who believe we can co-exist as a nation of multiple identities, all of which are fully American. The melting pot versus the mosaic.

Bilingual education has been at the center of this debate ever since the 1700s when European immigrants, mostly of German descent, arrived to this country and opened up their own schools where children were being taught in their native, non-English languages. In 1839 Ohio became the first state to adopt a bilingual education law to allow instruction in both German and English. Several states like New Mexico and Louisiana followed their lead.

However, just twenty years later, the first strong anti-bilingual education ruling came out of Congress prohibiting Native Americans from being taught in their native languages. This new law even went so far as to separate children from their parents by sending them to boarding schools where children who were caught speaking in their native tongues were punished. Language suppression as a means of social oppression was clearly being executed well into the late 1800s.

Meanwhile, in the early 1900s immigration to the United States from southern European countries continued to flood in with increasing numbers, intensifying the issue of language instruction, while at the same time adding to the controversy of assimilation. The government’s response was to pass the first federal language law as part of the Naturalization Act of 1906. This unprecedented law, which standarized naturalization procedures, mandated—among other requirements—that any person seeking to become a naturalized citizen must pass an English proficiency test. What ensued a little less than twenty years later was a wave of English-only instruction laws which were enacted by a total of thirty-four states, mostly fueled by anti-immigration sentiments during World War I. These laws basically demolished the state of bilingual education at the time.

In the 1960s a new wave of immigration, this time led by Cubans who had to flee their country during the revolution, settled in Florida. Yet, unlike most immigrant groups before them, these newcomers never completely let go of their language or heritage. They quickly established private schools with instruction in Spanish, and soon thereafter opened the first dual language immersion public school in the country, Coral Way Elementary in Miami.

During the height of the civil rights movement and the continued influx of immigration, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act (1968) to once and for all encourage native language instruction in all schools by allocating federal funds to school districts for this purpose.

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