For genuine reform, just end bilingual ed
When is a reform not a reform? When it prevents a greater reform. And especially when it does so intentionally. This is the kind of "reform" that Massachusetts state Rep. Antonio Cabral is proposing for the state's failed programs of bilingual education. The Massachusetts system of transitional bilingual education requires that if a school district enrolls 20 children with limited proficiency in English who have the same native language, it must provide them with instruction in their native language for all courses but English. The theory behind this system is that the children will learn English in English classes well enough to make the transition to all-English instruction. There is only one thing wrong with this theory: It does not work. This should have been obvious before the first transitional bilingual classroom opened its doors, for the program ensures that children will spend most of their time speaking in their native language and less than an hour a day in English. Predictably, the transition is impeded, and many children never make it at all. When Boston University undertook the management of the Chelsea schools, we discovered that some of the students in transitional bilingual programs were the children of parents who were themselves graduates of the program. The program had failed to teach them enough English to pass the language on to their children. Their children in turn were now subjected to the same educational abuse, second-generation victims of professional incompetence. Cabral's bill would preserve transitional bilingual education as an option for any district that wants it, while offering several new alternatives, each of which would put more emphasis on English but would still reserve substantial portions of the day for instruction in the native language. If this were the only choice open to Massachusetts, the Cabral bill would be marginally superior to the present disaster. But there is a better alternative: the abolition of bilingual education. Children are, by the wiring of their brains, remarkably adapted to learn new languages fluently, correctly and quickly. All that is needed is to immerse them in the new language. This country is full of people who arrived as children not knowing a word of English and who learned it quickly simply by going to a school without bilingual education. You don't notice them because they sound like native speakers of English. In fact, they are native speakers of English. They learned English precisely as they learned their first languages, by hearing it spoken and using it. I recently learned of a young man who came from the Ukraine with his parents at the age of 5, knowing no English. When his first-grade teacher met his parents at a conference, she did not believe he could be their child. They barely spoke English and he spoke it as a native. One need not rely on anecdotal evidence to see the folly of bilingual education and how easily it can be corrected. The state of California had one of the most intense programs of bilingual education in the country, with the usual dismal results. Gradually, groups of Hispanic-American parents began to organize against bilingual education. And then Ron K. Unz, a highly successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, organized a campaign to abolish bilingual education by referendum. Proposition 227 passed in 1998 by 61 percent of the vote. During the campaign and after there were dire predictions of disaster from the proponents of bilingual education. But test results have proved otherwise. The reading ability of Hispanic-American children began to improve immediately, with the most impressive gains in school districts that implemented the new law promptly and faithfully. Within two years, California children whose native language is Spanish have increased their scores by 40 percent. In the fall of 2000, an Unz-supported referendum in Arizona passed by 63 percent, freeing that state's children from the impositions of bilingual education. Mr. Unz is now taking his campaign nationwide, and has expressed interest in a campaign in Massachusetts. Hence the current "reform" proposal. Thus far, whenever the people have been given a chance to rule on bilingual education they have voted to end it. Bilingual proponents in Massachusetts dare not risk the judgment of the people. Bilingual education is in the interest of only two groups: one, bilingual educators, who face unemployment from the judgment of the people, and two, ethnic nationalists, for whom the preservation and exaltation of immigrant language at the expense of English gives important political advantages to their English-speaking spokesmen. We must stop sacrificing the interests of our children to these two groups. Massachusetts should welcome Ron Unz, the liberator of children who have been locked in the prison of bilingual education. John Silber is chancellor of Boston University. |