ALR May June 98 - The Benefits of Bilingualism

G"erei owis, k"esyo wlhnane est, ekwons espeket, oinom ghe g"rum woghom weghontm, oinom-kwe megan bhorom, oinom-kwe ghmenm oku bherontm. Owis nu ekwomos eweek"et: "Ker aghnutoi moi ekwons agontm nerm wedentei." Ek'wos tu ewewk"ont: "Kludhi, owei, ker ghe aghnutoi nsemei widntmos: ner, potis, owiom r wlhnam sebhi gewermom westrom k"rneuti. Neghi owiom wlhna esti." Tod kekhuwos owis agrom ebhuget.

What did the sheep say to the horse? If you had difficulty in understanding the story, you've got something in common with more than 3.5 million students presently enrolled in schools throughout America. Imagine trying to learn math, science, or social studies if you can't understand the language the teacher is using!

Nearly one in every six school-aged children in the US. comes from a home where a language other than English is regularly spoken. During the last two decades, this segment of the population - known as language-minority students - has been growing at a rate 250 percent faster than the overall population, a trend which is expected to continue well into the next century.

Learning a language is a difficult task which takes time. Even native English-speakers study English for 12 years of elementary and secondary school. In school, a more formal and abstract form of English is employed by teachers and in textbooks; making it that more difficult to comprehend. Any native English speaker who has studied another language can recall the number of years that it took before a basic conversation about the weather was achievable. Imagine how much time it would take before a scientific concept became comprehensible in a second language!

Yet many people expect language-minority students to accomplish a task which they themselves have been unable to do -- to become fully proficient in a new language. And these people expect non-native English-speaking students to learn subjects like math, science, social studies and other academic content at the same rate as their English-speaking peers. History, research and common-sense tell us that this is simply not possible.

Schools have a responsibility to teach children academics. If a child cannot understand the language of instruction, there is no way that he or she is going to learn the material being presented. Concepts like "two plus two equals four," don't change depending on the language: you only need to learn them once. And if you are able to concentrate on learning concepts without trying to decipher the language in which they are being taught, the chances are greater that you will succeed academically.

Bilingual education does just that. In bilingual, or dual, education programs, content material is taught in the students' native language while they are being taught English. Both English and the native language are used for instruction, the amount of use of each depending on the English language proficiency of the students. Just because a student doesn't know English, it does not mean that he or she doesn't know anything. Schools should build upon the skills and knowledge students bring, and bilingual education programs do just that, enabling limited English proficient (LEP) students to apply their academic knowledge while they learn a new language.

Bilingual education is simply a method of teaching and the goal of dual language programs is academic success, not just English language acquisition. No one claims that bilingual instruction is a panacea. Merely teaching children through their native language is no magical cure for the ills of today's schools - as demonstrated by the underachievement of many native-English-speaking students. But bilingual education does work.

Despite myths to the contrary, throughout our history most non-native English speakers neither learned English very quickly nor succeeded in American schools. A comparison of the high school entry rates of native whites and children of immigrants from non-English-speaking countries based on a 1908 survey of public schools shows, for example, that in Boston, while 70 percent of the children of native Whites entered high school, only 32 percent of the children of non-native English-speaking immigrants did so. In Chicago, 42 percent of the native White children enrolled, but only 18 percent of children from non-English speaking families made it to high school.

But at the beginning of the 20th century, one could find a good job which did not require a great deal of proficiency in English. Today, as we approach the 21st century, however, proficiency in only English, including high levels of literacy, is not enough. Global interdependence and mass communication requires the ability to function in more than one language.

Research shows that the more proficient on is in one's native language, the better she or he is able to learn a second language. There is significant evidence that the higher the degree of bilingualism, the more cognitive benefits that accrue to the individual. Research documents that both the English language proficiency and academic achievement levels of students in bilingual education programs will meet an/or exceed those of students in all-English programs if given sufficient time. The common mistake is to expect immediate results. While students in bilingual programs maintain their academic progress, they may initially lag behind students in all-English programs in English proficiency. But longitudinal studies show that not only do they catch up to but they often surpass their peers both academically and linguistically.

School districts like Calexico in California and Ysleta in Texas have literally transformed their entire school districts by implementing bilingual education. "All students who enroll in our schools will graduate from high school fluently bilingual and prepared to enter a four-year college or university" begins the Vision Statement for the Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso, Texas. A school district which, five years ago, ranked at the bottom on state tests, Ysleta ISD has undergone a total transformation, based on the belief that "regardless of the social, economic, ethnic, or political status of [their] students, they maintain very high standards for, and expectations of, all their students.' Today, Ysleta is ranked first among all major urban school districts in Texas on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.

Ninety-eight percent of the children entering Kindergarten in California's Calexico School District are LEP. The District shifted the focus of its instructional program from student limitations to student strengths: from remedial programs emphasizing English language development to enriched programs emphasizing total academic development; from narrow ESL programs to comprehensive bilingual education programs which provide dual language instruction. In Calexico schools, LEP students receive as much as 80 percent of their early elementary instruction in their native language. After students achieve full English proficiency, they continue to have opportunities to study in and further develop their Spanish. Today, Calexico's dropout rate is half of the state average for Hispanic students and more than 90 percent of their graduates go on to junior or four-year colleges and universities.

Perhaps no one can better attest to the success of bilingual education than those students who have gone through these programs themselves. Rebecca Yu, a Chinese speaker, graduated from UCLA in 1994 with a degree in economics/business. Deborah Reed, a Cherokee speaker, graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1993 with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She is presently working for Radio Tashkent in the Republic of Uzbekistan and owns her own business, Axel Rodriguez, a Spanish-speaker from Nicaragua, and Peggy Shen, a Chinese speaker, are both in medical school. Other graduates of bilingual education programs are teachers, lawyers and engineers.

One bilingual education student wrote, "Bilingual education began to formulate my new experiences of success in school. there was never a year in which I was not an honor roll student. Bilingual education opened a whole new spectrum of light for me." Another says, "I think that all Americans should have the opportunity to learn more than one language in order to help the country remain a leader...If we are capable and smart enough to land on the moon, why can't we offer the opportunity to our citizens to educate themselves. According to Rebecca Yu, "Bilingual education is the opportunity to our future. [It] opened the door to the American Dream to me. Without it, I would not have had the basic skills to communicate to the rest of the world. We, as young Americans, are entitled to the very basic human rights of learning to speak English and to find our place in our new home. We have to have bilingual education to give us the equal footing to achieve in life, and to find our own way to make the United States a better place to live.

In California, Ron Unz, a wealthy software entrepreneur, has proposed an initiative called "English for the Children." Unz, a theoretical physicist who ran for State Governor in the 1994 Republican primary, has never been in a bilingual education classroom. Unz has declared that bilingual education is the cause for the high drop out rate among Hispanic students, even though fewer than 30 percent of the 1.4 million LEP students in California schools receive any native language instruction. The overwhelming majority are in classrooms where their teacher speaks in English only.Despite these facts, Unz has proposed that all LEP students in California under the age of ten be taught exclusively in English. They are to be given one year of intensive "sheltered" English after which they will be placed in regular classrooms with no special assistance.

What would be the consequences, if enacted, of the Unz proposal?It would:

Impose an inflexible, state-mandated curriculum for all LEP children - regardless of the wishes of parents, the recommendations of educators, or the decisions of local school boards;
Require an English-only methodology that is political fashionable but has no support in scientific research and no quality control to ensure that students are learning;
Create chaos in regular classrooms by "mainstreaming" 1.4 million LEP students after just one year of English instruction - thereby overtaxing teachers and holding back English-proficient students;
Cost taxpayers up to $7 billion, while risking the loss of an additional $2.5 billion in federal funding;
Deny parental choice by making it practically impossible to obtain a "waiver" of the English-only rule;
Intimidate teachers and administrators, with threats of lawsuits and financial penalties, for using any language but English to assist a child;
Restrict foreign-language instruction for all California students - including native English speakers;
Straight jacket the California legislature by requiring a two-thirds vote to amend the English-only mandate - making this radical experiment virtually impossible to modify or repeal. Most of California's 1.4 million LEP children are now enrolled in programs that provide them with special help in English. Unz would terminate this assistance after a single school year - just 180 days - and reassign these children to regular classrooms. The vast majority of LEP students, lacking the language skills to perform grade-level work in English, would be unable to keep up. Many teachers, lacking the appropriate training, would be unable to cope.

The likely impact would be severe:

A significant percentage of LEP students would have to repeat a grade or be placed in remedial classes;
English-speaking students, with less pressing educational needs, would receive less individual attention from their teachers;
Worst of all, schools would face a crucial dilemma: Either gear instruction to the level of English-speaking students and leave LEP students behind, or simplify the language of instruction and slow the academic progress of English proficient students. In short, Unz would deny some students the opportunity to meet high academic standards. This is unfair to all children.

Ironically, Unz would do nothing to save state resources currently earmarked for the education of LEP children. Instead, the English-only mandate would sacrifice the funding that California now receives under the federal Bilingual Education Act - $59 million last year - most of which goes directly to local school districts. By violating LEP children's civil rights, the initiative would also imperil the total federal contribution to California schools - about $2.5 billion annually.

Unz would be wasteful in financial as well as human terms. Most of California's 1.4 million LEP students would have to repeat at least one grade - at the statewide cost of $4,977 each. Others would need expensive remedial instruction from a corps of specially-trained teachers. The added expenditures for grade retention alone could total up to $7 billion. Remedial costs could add another $1 billion annually. That represents 25 to 30 times the state's current spending for LEP students.

It is interesting to note that while dual language instruction has always been a part of the education of "elites" in the US, it is frowned upon for anyone whose native language is not English. Although the outcome - bilingualism - is the same whether you are adding a "foreign" language to your native English or adding English to your native "foreign" language, bilingualism is only considered an asset for native-English speakers.

Under the guise of wanting to "help" immigrants and others who are limited English proficient, people like Ron Unz and groups like US English promote English monolingualism as the key to success in America. In reality, they are practicing lingualism, where policies regarding language use are used by the majority group t legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) among groups defined on the basis of their mother tongue. If English monolingualism denies a child access to the school curriculum, prevents children from communicating with their family members, and devalues the skills and knowledge that students bring to school, one has to question the motives of those who wish to deprive non-native speakers of English of the benefits of bilingualism which are so highly prized by native speakers.