Debating Bilingual Education

▪ Primary Source

      The movement for bilingual education gained steam in 1974 with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act and the Equal Education Opportunity Act, which mandated that all federally funded schools meet the "special educational needs" of students not proficient in English. In many districts, bilingual education was installed so that young students could first learn basic academic subjects in their native language before acquiring English as a second language. In the years following, however, the numbers of students in these programs swelled, and critics pointed to the alarming dropout rate and a lack of English-language proficiency despite increases in funding. States with significant percentages of Spanish speakers, such as California, became battlegrounds over the issue of bilingual education. Those on both sides of the issue believed their position led to more successful students while their opponents' position only served to isolate nonnative speakers. In 1998 the passage of California's Proposition 227 mandated the abolition of bilingual education in the public school system, requiring all instruction to be delivered in English. Similar ballot measures began appearing in other states, passing in Arizona in 2000. The following debate was broadcast on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer television program on September 21, 1997, and was conducted by Margaret Warner, NewsHour correspondent. The transcript is reprinted below.

      Margaret Warner, Debate moderator: Nationally, the controversy over bilingual education has boiled down to an even starker question, whether to preserve it at all. About 6 percent of the nation's school population—some 3.1 million children—are enrolled in some sort of bilingual education. The federal government spends $178 million to support bilingual programs, a fraction of the billions spent on bilingual education by states and localities. But several bills have been introduced in this Congress to abolish or drastically curtail federal support for bilingual education, and in California, a group called English for the Children is collecting signatures for a ballot referendum in next year's election. It would require all public school instruction to be conducted in English. With us now are Ron Unz, chairman of the English for the Children, the committee sponsoring the California ballot initiative, and James Lyons, executive director of the National Association of Bilingual Education. Mr. Unz, why do you believe that bilingual education should be scrapped?

      Ron Unz, Anti-Bilingual Education Activist: Well, the overwhelming practical evidence is that bilingual education has failed on every large scale case that's been tried in the United States, in particular in California. The origins of this initiative was the case last year of a lot of immigrant Latino parents in downtown LA, who had to begin a public boycott of their local elementary school to try to force the school to give their children the right to be taught English, which the school was denying. And I think that really opened my eyes to the current state of the program in California, where the statistics are dreadful.

      Margaret Warner: Mr. Lyons.

      James Lyons, National Association for Bilingual Education: It is not the case that bilingual education is failing children. There are poor bilingual education programs, just as there are poor programs of every type in our schools today. But bilingual education has made it possible for children to have continuous development in their native language, while they're in the process of learning English, something that doesn't happen overnight, and it's made it possible for children to learn math and science at a rate equal to English-speaking children while they're in the process of acquiring English.

      Margaret Warner: Mr. Unz, what about that point that for these children who don't speak English well they will fall behind in the basic subjects if they can't be taught those in Spanish, or whatever language? I shouldn't say just Spanish, but whatever their family's language is.

      Ron Unz: That's a very reasonable point. And to the extent that we're talking about older children, 14 or 15 year olds who come to the United States, don't know any English and are put in the public schools I think a very reasonable case can be made for bilingual education. I don't know if it's correct, but at least you can make a case for it. But most of the children we're talking about enter California or America public schools when they're five or six or seven. At the age of five years old, the only academic subjects a child is really doing is drawing with crayons or cutting and, you know, with paper and that type of thing. And at that age children can learn another language so quickly and easy that the only reasonable thing to do is to put them in a program where they're taught English as rapidly as possible and then put into the mainstream classes with the other children so they can move forward academically.

      Margaret Warner: There is something to that point, isn't there, Mr. Lyons, that very young children do absorb languages very quickly?

      James Lyons: They absorb certain facets of language very quickly. They learn to speak in an unaccented form like a native English speaker. But the research shows that actually adults are much more efficient and quicker language learners than children because they're working from a broader linguistic base, a greater conceptual base. I really take objection to what Mr. Unz is saying; that children at the age of five, six, and seven are only coloring and cutting out paper. That isn't going to lead to the high standards.

      When I go into elementary schools, first, second, and third grade, I see schools that are focused on teaching literacy skills, certainly by the third grade, that's a national goal. I see schools that are teaching children about life around them. The point of the matter is, is that bilingual education provides children with continuous development in an intelligible way while they're in the process of acquiring a language.

      Margaret Warner: All right. Let me stay with you for a minute, Mr. Lyons. Let me just ask you something. I think and polls show that many Americans say if a child comes here from another country, they can certainly understand why this is necessary. But I think a majority of students in bilingual ed—the younger students—were all born in the U.S.

Generations of limited English proficiency

      James Lyons: That's absolutely correct. A majority still—just the bare majority of the children who are limited English proficient—and actually only about a third of those children ever received bilingual education programming. But those children are native born. One of the reasons that they are limited English proficient is their parents, who were non-English language background people, didn't succeed in the English only programs, which were the only programs in this country prior to the period that we're talking about today.

      Margaret Warner: What about that point, Mr. Unz?

      Ron Unz: Well, most of these parents actually are immigrants, themselves. In other words, they came here five or ten or fifteen years ago, and their children either were born here, or their children came with them at a very young age. So, in other words, the children, themselves, are often native born, but the parents are almost always first generation immigrants.

      Margaret Warner: All right. Let me stay with you for a minute. You called this a failed system. What is your definition of success or failure?

      Ron Unz: Well, let's look at the numbers in California—and they really are horrifying. A quarter of all the children in California public schools are classified as not knowing English, limited English proficiency. Of the ones who don't know English in any given year only 5 or 6 percent learn English. Since the goal of the system, obviously, should be make sure that these children learn English, we're talking about a system with an annual failure rate of 95 percent. Now, when we're talking about little children, everybody I know who's come here from other countries—I work in Silicon Valley—I'm in the software business—many of my friends are foreign immigrants. They came here when they were a variety of different ages. All of them agree that little children or even young teenagers can learn another language quickly, though only 5 percent of these children in California are learning English each year. And that's what I define as failure.

      Margaret Warner: Do you agree with that, either that definition of success, which is that it's learning English, is that the purpose of bilingual education? And secondly, do you agree that it's not doing the job?

      James Lyons: Well, the first point is I think we need a broader definition than simply learning English. The child who learns English but doesn't learn any of the other academic subjects taught in school is not going to succeed. But even if we use the restricted definition that Mr. Unz is proposing of learning English—and he's basing this on the "re-designation rates" of children who are re-designated annually as fully English proficient, as opposed to limited English proficient—it isn't bilingual education that's to blame. One third of the children in California who are limited English proficient are receiving bilingual education. Two thirds are not. And if you compare the re-designation rates of schools that provide a lot of bilingual education versus the English only kind of programs that Mr. Unz wants, you find the schools that are using native language as the medium of instruction do much better.

      Margaret Warner: Let me stay with you, Mr. Lyons, for a minute, and ask you about something that came up in Betty Ann's taped piece, which is that some parents who want the children in bilingual ed actually say they wanted in part to maintain the family's original language. Is that a purpose of bilingual education, as well as a transition to English? Do you think it's also to maintain a kind of dual cultural identity?

      James Lyons: I think the notion of maintaining the ability to communicate in the family is terribly important. It's not the primary objective. I remember a television producer, in fact, who told me her life story, the fact that she brought home a note when she was five years old from the kindergarten teacher saying, please, do not let Juliet speak Italian anymore, she told me that that was—her grandmother lived with her family, lived in the same home—that that was the very last day, she said, that "I ever spoke to my grandmother. And it was the last day that my grandmother ever spoke to me. And my grandmother lived in the house with my family for seven years from that point forward." That isn't what we want in America. I think we want families that can communicate across generations, grandparents and grandchildren.

      Margaret Warner: Mr. Unz, do you think that's a proper role for public education, to help these children remain essentially in linguistic contact with their families?

"Family culture, family tradition and family language are the responsibility of the family"

      Ron Unz: I think family culture, family tradition, and family language are the responsibility of the family. They should be the ones making the decision as to how much or how little of these cultural traditions should they maintain. The responsibility of the American public education system is to give young children the tools they need to become assimilated, productive members of society. And one of the most important tools is a knowledge of reading and writing and speaking English.

      Right now hundreds of thousands of the children in California and around the United States are leaving the public schools illiterate in English because of the schools' refusal to teach them English at a young age. Think about what it means when a child leaves the public schools as a teenager or as a graduate not knowing how to read or write English at anything more than a second or third grade level. They can never get a job. They can never be successful. And that's where a lot of the problems like crime and gangs come from because the schools are failing in their responsibility because of the completely mis-perceived, mis-structured educational theory which just doesn't work in practice.

      Margaret Warner: And how do you answer that basic question, which that superintendent in Betty Ann's piece also raised, these kids leave school, they can't compete in an English environment?

      James Lyons: And many of those children not only have been in bilingual education; they are English language background children. We have children who are graduating today after 13 years in public schooling unable to read, unable to write. Is bilingual education to blame? No, it's not. It can't be, because these children were never in a bilingual education program, and, in fact, they're native English speakers. I think we're confusing what is the cause of the problem. We have poor schools throughout this country in virtually every state of the union. Bilingual education are part of the poor schools in some places; in other places they're allowing children to achieve everything that they need to achieve and to excel, go on to college.

Source: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, September 21, 1997, "Double Talk? The Debate over Bilingual Education."

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