Bilingual Education Now Off Back Burner
Dick Foreman
Bart Turner of the Valley Citizens League will have his hands full for the league's next debate, which will discuss the future of bilingual education. Turner asked me what my position was, and he caught me off guard. It seems that we have had so many initiatives and politics going on we haven't talked nearly enough about some of these other major issues, and bilingual education is a major one that will likely be on the November ballot. Should students continue in bilingual programs or should they be disbanded in favor of the full immersion approach? I usually learned stuff I didn't want to learn because I had to. I didn't like math. Didn't like physics, either. But I learned them anyway. My guess is, if I would have been offered a 'Bimath' option for kids like me who really didn't excel in math nor seem to have much background in it, I would have taken that instead. But would I have learned as much? I don't know. I've never used calculus or trigonometry since high school. I don't recall relying on physics much, either. I use English every day. |