Friday, May 29, 1998
Prop. 227 would hurt those it seeks to help
BILINGUALISM: Skills required for learning languages found only
in preadolescent children
By Patricia Greenfield
In Los Angeles, parents spend a lot of money to send their
children to the Lycee Francais, so that their children will become
bilingual in French and English. If well-educated, successful
families are making such an effort to ensure bilingual education
for their children, why has bilingual education become so
controversial in California?
Because the Lycee Francais is an example of what Professor
Catherine Snow at Harvard calls "elite bilingualism." She points to
a double standard whereby bilingualism is admired and sought after
by groups at the upper rungs of society (for example, the United
Nations International School for U.N. personnel in New York), but
is denigrated and avoided for groups who are at the bottom of the
social ladder, particularly if they happen to be non-white.
This double standard is nowhere more evident than in Proposition
227, the anti-bilingual education measure that will be on the
ballot on June 2. For example, our public high schools spend a lot
of time, effort and money to teach foreign languages, with a goal
of attaining the maximum bilingual skills possible; the Los Angeles
United School District even has a magnet high school (Venice)
devoted to foreign language instruction which includes, for
example, Japanese and Russian. Yet the proponents of Proposition
227 are against bilingual language instruction when the second
language happens to be English.
The real irony is that high schools are doomed to fail in
attaining true bilingualism for the simple reason that their
students are too old. Years of research indicates that there is a
sensitive period for language learning; it ends at adolescence.
After this period, languages tend to be learned without the
subtleties of grammar and accent of a native speaker. Ironically,
Proposition 227, if it passes, will take bilingual education away
from those children who have the best chance to become truly
bilingual: those that are exposed to two languages early.
These are the students whose parents speak a foreign language at
home; they also include the native English speaking students
enrolled in "two-way immersion" schools, such as Edison Language
Academy in Santa Monica. In these exceptional public schools, there
is true cross-cultural exchange and bilingual learning. Native
English speakers learn to speak, read and write in Spanish (or, in
some schools, Korean) alongside native Spanish (or Korean)
speakers; they have the advantage of being exposed to speakers with
native accents, grammar and vocabulary.
This is very different from foreign language instruction in high
school, where not only the learners, but also the teachers, are
disadvantaged. Most foreign language teachers are not native
speakers and, as adult language learners, have imperfect accents
and grammar.
In two-way immersion schools, children not only become
bilingual, they also become biliterate, learning to read and write
in both languages. Biliteracy is not something that a child can
achieve at home, even if parents speak a foreign language. Literacy
in a second language, as in the first, requires school instruction.
Families have made a positive choice to place their children in
two-way immersion schools because they want bilingualism and
biliteracy for their children. If Proposition 227 passes on June 2,
these schools will become illegal. Parents who want their children
to be bilingual and biliterate in preparation for the
internationalized world of the 21st century will no longer have
that choice.
But if Proposition 227 passes, there will be an even more tragic
effect. Many children of immigrants will lose their native language
faster than their parents can learn English. At UC Berkeley,
Professor Lily Wong-Fillmore has shown that children lose native
language skills because of early exposure to English-only
classrooms. Their parents then lose something most of us take for
granted: a common language with our children. Without a common
language, parents lose the ability to socialize their children;
without a common language, children lose the capacity to
communicate with their parents.
In my psychology classes at UCLA, I have had students burst into
tears after reading Fillmore’s work; for the first time they
realized why they had lost communication with their immigrant
parents. Immigrant parents will never acquire perfect English; like
high school students, they are too old when they start learning –
and, in addition, they often have less exposure to English than
their children do. Parent-child communication is critical to a
child’s development. For immigrant parents, this communication will
be diminished by the passage Proposition 227.
If the "English only" mandate of Proposition 227 becomes law, it
will bring us close to the days only one generation ago when Native
American and Latino students were forbidden to speak their native
languages at school. Beginning in the 1960s, language rights became
part of human rights. Everyone may not want to become bilingual.
But Proposition 227 takes away that human right to choose.