Friday, January 16, 1998
Education
IN THE LOOP Bilingual programs for non-native speakers assist
children’s transition into all-English environments; initiative
could terminate much-needed specialized classes
By Adam Yamaguchi
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
In a nation as culturally diverse as the United States, there is
little uniformity. Though English is often the common denominator
among Americans, a sizeable cross-section of the population
includes non-native speakers, who are fluent only in "foreign"
languages.
That’s where bilingual education steps in. It attempts to
provide assistance to students who demonstrate limited English
proficiency. However, the program is not without its critics.
Opponents of bilingual education claim the program is a failure,
saying it’s not adequately teaching students English, and at best,
it slows the process of English acquisition. Activists behind the
"English for the Children" initiative intend to outlaw bilingual
education by June 1998. Supporters say bilingual education simply
needs the support of schools and teachers to be a success, and that
it’s crucial to the academic development of non-fluent English
speakers.
In an interview with the Daily Bruin, Associate Professor
Concepcion Valadez explains why it’s important for schools to
maintain bilingual education programs.
What is bilingual education and what does it attempt to
accomplish?
Bilingual education’s goal in this country – or rather, the
reason it’s an issue is that it is a very narrow use of bilingual
education, using that first language to help non-English speakers
not lose ground in academic learning while learning English. The
purpose is to use that first language as a bridge on learning, as
opposed to having all instruction in English where they’re not sure
what’s going on. Then they would lose two or three years while they
begin to get a little bit of what’s going on.
In general, who are these programs serving?
The largest number of those students are Latino – 80 or 85
percent are Spanish-speaking. This initiative is mainly an
anti-Latino issue. Here’s where the politics get in the way of
education.
Are the bilingual education programs accomplishing what they
have set out to do?
Yes. In general, within 2-3 years the children are learning
enough English that they are making the transition. Sometimes they
make it all by themselves by the end of the second year in the
program.
Some proponents of bilingual education claim that those students
who speak two languages display academic and cognitive advantages
over their monolingual counterparts. Can you substantiate these
claims?
I concur. What happens is that if you have a language along with
all the cultural background that comes with that language, then you
develop systems of problem solving. And if you have other languages
in a fully developed context, then you have more ways of addressing
the various viewpoints, so when it comes to problem solving or
creativity then you have many more ways of addressing that
particular situation. And when you have individuals who can go from
one to the other without missing a beat then you have an ideal
situation. And that’s what is called cognitive flexibility.
Is there one specific model or approach to bilingual instruction
or are there various methods of attaining that transition?
There are many many ways, probably over 80 different ways you
can organize a bilingual education classroom, depending on your
goals. In this country, the controversy is over the small
first-language assistance for those children in schools who come
here without speaking any English. There are other models which are
enrichment or those that are trying to recuperate or bring back a
language that is lost.
The transitional method lets students make the transition to
English, and then leaves behind the native language. But we also
have some important programs which are two-way. Those let students
retain that first language as well and add English. Also there’s a
model that uses bilingual education as a medium of instruction only
to get access to that second language. There’s also a program which
introduces students to another culture and that’s bilingual
biculturalism.
In the United States, the predominantly used model is the
transitional, method, right?
Yes. I’d say about 98 or 99 percent of the programs in the
United States focus on assisting non-English speakers on an
approach just so that they’ll have a positive introduction to
English.
You mentioned that students are immersed in these bilingual
education programs for three years. Does this mean students are
proficient in English? Are they pretty much independent when they
leave the programs?
Yeah, for you to make sense of the language it’s a minimum of
that. Research says students could use extra support beyond that,
maybe six or seven years, but three should be enough. If you have
the program well organized so kids are successful immediately –
learning to read and write in first grade – very soon you make the
transition to English.
The fourth year is the critical year. That’s when the students
are pretty much going to be in an all-English class. That requires
teachers who are trained with techniques for elaborating, good
teaching, paraphrasing. drawing, giving examples, explaining,
etc.
Critics of bilingual education charge that students in bilingual
education programs generally acquire English at a slower rate than
those who are thrown into an English-only classroom setting.
That’s not true. What happens is that there are lots of students
who don’t speak English well and have already begun school with
another language, and they’re put immediately in English. They did
not get support that should have been given to them, and so they
won’t do well in school. And I think people forget that school is
not just about language. Language is a vehicle for learning but you
could have a person speaking perfect English but not doing well in
school. And we already have those, the black kids and the Anglo
kids who don’t speak anything else but who are not doing so well.
The other thing that compounds this is that you have the
English-only people who are wanting to yank away this small help
that the kids are getting and they are grabbing onto the fact that
there are a lot of classrooms that don’t have a lot of trained
teachers. So bilingual education by itself is not a miracle. It has
to be in the hands of a skilled teacher. In addition to a good
teacher, they need to know the bilingual techniques and we just
don’t have them. We have many many children coming that need these
services so there’s this shuffle. Kids move from one class to
another and one community to another. So never are there enough
teachers. It’s not the fault of bilingual education, it’s the fault
of the implementation. So we really need to tighten the
implementation and not just throw it away.
Is the lack of qualified teachers an issue of funding or lack of
interest?
We just need more teachers, not funding. It’s all basic funding
that we have. We just don’t have enough trained teachers. In Los
Angeles, roughly one out of every six teachers is an emergency
teacher, who has no credentials, no training, and these are the
ones who are going to be teaching in schools that have large
numbers of children who don’t speak English. It’s a question of
commitment to doing something for these kids.
Roughly 2.8 million elementary and secondary grade level
students in the nation are classified as limited English
proficiency (LEP) students and 1.3 million are in California. How
many of these students are being accommodated in current bilingual
education programs?
In California, 25 percent are not being helped.
Despite the initiative and English-only politics, have there
been any positive steps taken toward preserving and enhancing
bilingual education programs? Have schools pushed for increased
training or recruitment of teachers?
There have been efforts in trying to recruit more people. In Los
Angeles teachers who taught in bilingual education classes would
get an additional amount of money.
Have Americans been receptive to the issue of bilingual
education programs? Is there a concern over the legitimacy or
effectiveness of such programs?
I think in general American society does not know what it is. We
have a lopsided population. Those who don’t have young children
don’t know. I think in general Americans approve of the idea of
having more kids being successful in schools and we’ve had a
positive attitude toward languages other than English recently. At
this moment there is an interest that we need more people who
should speak more than one language and I think the vast middle
class knows this. But we also have a population that is
anti-immigrant who are threatened by the increased visibility of
other languages that they aren’t used to seeing. This
anti-bilingual education sense is mixed with that sense of losing
what "we thought we had." Things are changing and becoming
multi-cultural and multilingual. There are some who find it
exciting to see various languages and cultures but some find it
threatening.
Do you feel they are feeding off people’s ignorance and
anti-immigrant sentiment?
Yes, and I think people need to know what this is all about and
tease apart the political anti-immigrant attitude with the
pedagogical and educational aspects.
What does the law say about bilingual education? Does the
government mandate the accessibility of programs for LEP
students?
In the 1974 Supreme Court ruling for Lau vs. Nichols, it
established bilingual education. It was fairly general but what it
said was that an individual had the right to an equitable
education, so that if a child knows no English then that child
deserves to receive the instruction or access. So it’s a follow-up
to the idea that those here have a right to an equitable education.
But it’s not enough that the programs are there if it’s not
accessible. So the way it’s spelled out has been left up to the
states. The states have developed the implementation. We’ve had
various laws to train and then in 1987 we had an English-only
proposition that passed in California and that was part of the
nationwide movement of making English the official language so it
became the English-only amendment. So the bilingual education law
we had in place was allowed to expire. At this moment, we don’t
have a law in place but the federal law is still there. Training,
curriculum is still there because there is a need for that. We have
credentialling laws that recognize the needs for making content
accessible to students so the teacher credential laws support
bilingual education. If a teacher does not know the first language
then he must know how language acquisition occurs so that the
teachers can do what they have to do in order to make the learning
accessible.
The activists behind the "English for the Children" movement
plan to eradicate bilingual instruction by June 1998, which would
leave 1.3 million non-fluent students without the the schooling
proponents deem necessary. How will this affect those students?
I think it would be a real disaster, it would be a real shame.
It would be going backwards, it would be an inhumane thing to do
with all those kids. We would have a total disaster. I just can’t
even imagine what a horrendous thing that is. I don’t know that
these people have really thought about the damage such an
initiative would do.
What do Americans need to know about the initiative?
They need to know what bilingual education really is. The
biggest misunderstanding is that bilingual education is not
teaching English. The initiative people are saying bilingual
education isn’t teaching English, knowing that people want their
kids to learn English. I was told that Unz has never even visited a
bilingual ed class to even know what’s going on.
What are the costs of training the teachers? If bilingual
education was outlawed, would there be much of a savings?
There’s no savings. When you have fewer kids in school, there
will be a bigger problem for police officers and the welfare
department. Costs are going to be shifted but bilingual ed. does
not cost much more. It does not duplicate education. It’s not even
five percent of the budget.
You mentioned that if bilingual ed was done away with, this
would create more problems for police and the welfare department.
Do you believe drop-out rates would surge as a result of a ban?
I think they would skyrocket. That’s the only thing keeping kids
in school. If all they’re doing is getting frustrated, people won’t
do it anymore. It would be a real shame, a diminishing of what we
stand for. It’s totally un-American. We say anybody who has the
interest can make it and here you’re cutting off this population
and setting it up for failure and that’s un-American. It would be a
disaster.