by Jim Brown
A education activist is asking Congress and the Bush Administration to consider putting an end to bilingual education programs in public schools.
Just a few weeks ago, arguably the most solidly Democratic state in America Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly to eliminate bilingual education. The group “English for the Children” has led similar successful efforts to end bilingual education programs in California and Arizona. Since California rid itself of bilingual education several years ago, the test scores of more than a million immigrant students have doubled.
Ron Unz, chairman of English for the Children, is hoping those results from the Golden State will start getting the attention of those in Congress and in the White House who back bilingual education.
“I think they're very nervous about offending some of the supporters of bilingual education,” Unz says, “including a limited number of very noisy Hispanic activists and especially the bilingual teachers, who are a very well-organized and vocal political force.”
The activist is urging Congress to consider mandating a one-year English immersion course for Hispanic public school students. That approach, he says, would be much more effective than current bilingual programs, which he says amount to classroom environments where Spanish is either the predominant or the only language spoken.
“If you take a child who doesn't speak English but only speaks Spanish, and you put that child in a program where almost everything is in Spanish and they only get 30 minutes of English a day, it will take them a long time to learn English,” Unz says. “English immersion means that you intensively teach them English from the first day of school and that way, they learn English in just a few months or a year.”
Unz notes that for the last 30 years, most Republicans and a good number of Democrats have been very critical of bilingual education.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)