English in Schools Kathy Scott
In November voters will be faced with a wide variety of propositions vying for their support, but perhaps none will more directly affect Santa Cruz County than Proposition 203, a measure aimed at making sure all school children are exposed to English in the classroom after a one-year immersion. Already there have been numerous appeals to defeat Prop. 203. branding those who support it as anti-bilingual education, or worse, as racist and prejudiced against Hispanics. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not know a single person who supports Prop. 203 who is against bilingualism per se. Prominent local citizens, including Hispanic leaders of our community, have spoken out against the way "bilingual" education has been delivered in the past. However, they are adamant that students be literate in English and Spanish. So are those educators -- of whom I count myself a member -- who are willing to come forward to say what we had just didn't work. It is not bilingual education we are against, just the methodology that failed to deliver literacy in either language. For years, entering Spanish-students have been taught the basics of reading, writing, and math in Spanish. In its purest form, the students were to receive about 30 minutes a day of English instruction, mostly in the form of chants and simple exercises that would "transition" them into English. Then, at about the fourth or fifth grade level, they were to be in English-based instruction. The premise of this approach is that the skills of reading, writing, and math transfer, once they are mastered, to any other language. In theory, that makes sense. In practice, it rarely worked. For one thing, there simply was not enough English exposure to give students a solid base into which to transfer. At best, students had functional oral English, but certainly not strong academic English. In addition, many students did not have a strong literacy in Spanish by fourth grade, either. When these students enter high school, they most certainly do not have ninth grade skills in English literacy. Most are four grades below the level they should be. What is worse, they do not have ninth-grade Spanish skills, either. Remember, their Spanish-based instruction essentially ended in fourth or fifth grade. The Spanish offerings after that are truly a hit-and-miss hodgepodge of programming. When test scores revealed that less than a third of the district's students even approached mastery in English literacy, the solution was to "fix" the teachers. Mandated English as a Second Language certification, countless workshops, and subtle messages that American teachers were not good enough -- we needed educators from Mexico -- flourished. While teachers did benefit from some of this professional development, students are still scoring far below state and national norms. There are huge numbers of children who enter kindergarten in this community who have heard no more English than they would have if they had grown up in Mexico. Spending four or five years in a program that gives them small spurts of chanting in English or simplified literacy skills is not going to give them what they need to pass the AIMS test (which is 100 percent in English) by the time they are sophomores. If we had them in school for a decade or so beyond fifth grade, it might just work, but we do not. This form of bilingualism, and just about every other local bilingual effort, has failed, despite herculean efforts. At best any one school is lucky to have a fraction of the truly literally bilingual teachers it needs equally dedicated to emphasizing both English and Spanish, and therefore, only a fraction of the students actually benefited from "bilingual" education. Those in opposition to Prop 203. say it is reminiscent of old programs that were tried decades ago that did not work well, either. However. educators have learned a great deal in the last 20 years about how to work with second-language learners and it is time to try again. Therefore, those who back Prop. 203 are supporting a change because what is in place has failed. Will Prop. 203 work any better in giving students literacy in English? It has in California, where this movement was given birth. Will it mean that Hispanic students "lose" their ability to speak Spanish, are alienated from their culture, and turn against their heritage? Not likely. There are many different philosophies that come to the table when the discussion centers on bilingual education. Some educators are still of the opinion that Hispanic students should be primarily Spanish speakers, and that it is not important for them to have a mastery of English beyond the ability to communicate verbally. Those that share this philosophy feel that it is society that needs to change, offering everything from voter ballots to highway signs in Spanish as well as English. Others feel that the only hope of the United States remaining a united country is to have an uniting language -- namely English. Still other non-Hispanics feel cheated that Spanish seems to be the language of bilingualism while the languages of their cultural pasts have been swept aside. A negative resentment prevails when any type of bilingual education is proposed because at least in this part of the country, bilingualism means Spanish only. And then there are those of us who feel that English should be truly mastered and the literacy of a second (or third) language highly encouraged. We feet that the best way to do this is to emphasize English in elementary school, offering Spanish (or whatever second language) as a class period, in the same way that math is a class period. Since so many students already know verbal Spanish, they would be given reading and writing exposure in this language for one period a day. Those who come into the system without a background in Spanish would start it the level of any foreign-language learner -- literally learning to say "hello" and count to 100. Then in middle school or high school, those students who wished to become truly bilingual would take Spanish classes every year they remained in school. If a native Spanish-speaker took Spanish literacy classes for six or seven years towards the end, rather than the beginning, of his school career, he or she is much more likely to become truly bilingual. Voting for Prop. 203 is NOT a vote against bilingual education. It is a vote for, not against, Hispanics in that it is one more effort to make all Americans equal in their opportunities to rise to the highest levels their own potential allows. (Scott is a Nogales High School teacher.) |