History of Bilingual Education

views updated

History of Bilingual Education

Photograph

By: Jeffry W. Myers

Date: 1994

Source: Corbis Corporation

About the Photographer: Jeffry M. Myers is a photographer and an author based in Seattle, Washington. This photograph is a part of the collection maintained by Corbis Corporation, a worldwide provider of visual content materials to such communications groups as advertisers, broadcasters, designers, magazines, and newspapers.

INTRODUCTION

In the United States, bilingual education includes any form of instruction in the nation's school systems where the English language is partnered with another language for classroom use. Bilingual education has a long history in the United States, often mirroring the predominate immigration patterns of a particular era.

At the time of the foundation of the American nation prior to 1800, bilingual education was a highly localized matter. In 1839, the state of Ohio became the first jurisdiction to formally endorse a form of bilingual instruction, when the teaching of its large population of German immigrant schoolchildren in both the English and German languages was established in the state public education system.

Louisiana enacted similar legislation for the instruction of the children of its French-speaking population in 1847; the Cajuns, as the descendants of the Acadian immigrants to Louisiana were known, had been a part of the Louisiana population since the 1740s. The New Mexico Territory also passed a law permitting bilingual instruction in English and Spanish in 1850.

By 1900, twelve American states had a form of legislated bilingual public school education. There were also informal and localized bilingual educational programs, often organized by specific immigrant or religious groups, in many American cities at this time.

The move of the United States to a more isolationist stance in foreign relations was reflected in the national educational policies after 1918. Persons who did not speak English as a first language were often perceived as potentially disloyal and un-American. By 1925, most American states had allowed their bilingual education programs to fade away.

The changes in the composition of American society after World War II brought pressures upon the public education system to accommodate increasing numbers of students who did not speak English as their first language. Various studies of the performance of such students in English-only instructional environments tended to confirm that the American education system was not permitting these students to advance at the same rate as their classmates.

In 1968, the U.S. Congress enacted the first Bilingual Education Act. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Lau v. Nichols decision that schools are obligated to take sufficient steps to assist non-English-speaking students to overcome linguistic barriers in the classroom. The federal statute passed by the U.S. Congress in 1974, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, provided a framework within which bilingual instruction could occur as an aspect of state-supported education.

At the time that this photograph was taken in Seattle in 1994, bilingual education was once again well established in many American school districts.

PRIMARY SOURCE

HISTORY OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

A crucial consequence of both the Equal Educational Opportunities Act and its application in various American states was the development of an accepted national standard as to what bilingual education actually means in practice. Although the standard can be articulated in different ways, most educational programs aimed at students whose first language is not English utilize a three-part approach.

The first part of the standard involves the use of a properly researched and tested program that ensures that students who have English as a second language have equal opportunities to succeed within the educational system. The second aspect of bilingual education is proper implementation of this instructional program. Adequate resources, including properly qualified teachers and appropriate instructional materials and supplies, must be provided to ensure the true implementation of the course of study. The third component of the standard is the existence of an ongoing monitoring system to assess the effectiveness of the bilingual program in preparing students for either further education or the workplace.

In a number of school districts, resolutions have been proposed that seek to remove various forms of bilingual educational programming from the school system. The best known of these resolutions was the 1998 Unz resolution in the state of California. The proponents of this resolution sought to replace bilingual education with a system known as English immersion, where students are required to take all classroom instruction in the English language regardless of their native language. Supporters of the Unz initiative pointed to studies suggesting that California students taught solely in English performed at least as well on standardized tests as did bilingual education students. These opponents of bilingual education also noted the additional costs required to provide bilingual instruction in public schools.

The passage of the Unz initiative in California, a state with a growing Spanish-speaking population, triggered similar voter initiatives in other states. The most significant political success for the English instruction advocates came in Arizona, despite the established practice of instructing the students living on Arizona's native reserves in their native language.

Whether the Unz initiative or similarly constructed legislative measures would successfully pass a legal challenge based on the precedent set in Lau v. Nichols and the cases that followed remains an open question. The ultimate sanction for school boards that choose to eliminate bilingual language instruction where the demographics suggest it should be provided is loss of federal education funding.

In other parts of the United States, bilingual education has prospered. For example, in Maine, a state adjacent to the Canadian province of Quebec and its French-speaking population, French language instruction is provided in school districts where the population warrants this programming.

In 2001, the U.S. Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act. An omnibus educational act with a number of different educational objectives, the act also provides a three-year window during which students who do not speak English as their first language may take mandated assessment tests in their native languages. After three years, the act requires that all assessments be conducted in English.