The time when educators debated whether anything other than English should be used in American classrooms has passed. Most agree that bilingual education is beneficial, if not essential, for the child who enters school speaking little or no English.

And the demand is growing. For example, Waukegan has 55 percent more students in bilingual education now than in 1985.

Sylvia Vela, director of bilingual and English As a Second Language (ESL) education in the Waukegan public schools, easily the largest program in Lake County, said, “In our technological society, language-minority children have a double task before them when they enter school: learning to speak English as well as learning skills. Many are doomed to failure if we do not help them.”

Bilingual education is subject matter taught in the student’s native language, while ESL is instruction in English skills given in English to allow an immigrant to survive whether in the community, the factory or the university. Because the instruction is in English, people from different countries can be taught in one classroom.

Adena Staben, faculty coordinator of ESL at the College of Lake County, said, “If there is a bilingual program, children do not lose two years in such things as math and science while they are learning English.” The time frame is the hook on which controversy swings.

In a recent debate held in Lake County, Ruth Lambach, ESL coordinator of the refugee program at Truman College in Chicago, represented U.S. English, a national citizens’ action group working to establish English as the official language of the United States and at the same time to guarantee the right for all people in this country to learn English. She said, “While I do not think the public, the taxpayers, are obligated to sustain someone’s culture, I do think they are obligated to provide skills to allow people to operate freely and smoothly in our multicultural society, and any parent who really cares about their child is not going to want them in a bilingual program for very long.”

George Samuelian, who retired recently as principal of North School in Waukegan, grew up in an Armenian-speaking home and has no recollection of how he learned to speak English. All he can remember is sitting in a circle with other kids in school, holding a Dick-and-Jane reader, which might as well have been written in Chinese for all it meant to him. “But pretty soon I could read it, too,” he said. However, based on his experience as principal of a school with a largely Hispanic population, he thinks it is better for children to learn in their native language as long as they make the transition to English-only classes in a reasonable time.

“We monitored them carefully at North to make sure that happened,” he said. “Any bilingual program incorporates ESL,” Vela said, “because the goal is to mainstream the child in three years or less. Each year they are in bilingual, more of the instruction is given in English. Very few are in the program more than five years.”

Waukegan Unit School District 60, with an enrollment of 12,000, has about 1,800 non-English speaking students. Sixty-five of those are in an ESL-only program because they represent a polyglot of languages from Russian to Khmer to Polish. The rest, Spanish-speaking, are in bilingual/ESL. Waukegan’s program extends from kindergarten through high school, and most of the students in it are recent arrivals.

Bilingual classes meet in half of the elementary buildings in the district, in three of the four middle schools and in the high school. The ESL- only program is concentrated in one building. Together they employ 72 teachers and 10 support staff members. Currently, Vela said, the district is looking at more team teaching so as to integrate the learning enviornment for all students.

At present, the Waukegan school population is about one-third each Euro- American, African-American and Hispanic, Vela said. The first two are stabilized while the third is growing. According to her research, in 1985 there were 1,098 children in bilingual education in Waukegan compared with more than 1,700 today.

An intake assessment determines whether a child is limited in English, but the parents have the right to refuse bilingual education. Last year only 35 refused, Vela said, and in those cases the parents were usually strongly motivated to help their children.

Primo Aguayo of Waukegan said he transferred his oldest son, now 14, to a Catholic school after two years because the youngster found the bilingual program confusing. The child already spoke a little English when he entered school. Since 1976 the state of Illinois has mandated transitional bilingual programs in school districts with 20 or more limited-English-speaking children in any one language group. But Waukegan has had a program since 1970.

Vela, who came to this district four years ago from a similar job in Rockford, said, “Waukegan is recognized as a pioneer in bilingual education.”

According to Maria Seidner, manager of the bilingual section for the Illinois State Board of Education, the state funds 50 percent of the cost of bilingual and ESL education, which currently amounts to $48 million statewide.

Libertyville Grade School District 70, which has an enrollment of 2,300, has 45 children in an ESL program taught by two itinerant teachers. “Based on the needs and the scheduling, they work in a tutorial setting or go into the regular classroom and work with the child,” said Cynthia Arndt, director of educational services. “We used to have only three or four children a year who did not speak English, but with the growth of companies like Abbott Laboratories, executives from all over the world are coming in, and so we started this program three years ago.”

Avon School in Lake Villa, enrollment 560, had an Urdu-speaking family with five children arrive on its doorstep several years ago. “The classroom teachers were at a loss because we did not have special teachers for them,” said Marcia Morris, speech and language pathologist, who worked to teach the youngsters basic survival skills such as how to ask for things in the cafeteria.

“Fortunately, we had Sheila Rajamani, our library clerk, who could go into the classroom with them and translate.” Rajamani is a native of India, where Urdu is one of many languages. “These were very bright children, and they acquired the language rapidly,” Morris said. “Within three years the oldest girl was an honor student in the junior high school. But they also had a lot of support and encouragement at home. Many children need a crutch, especially when the subject matter is difficult. They are not dumb kids.” The experience and age of the child are determining factors in how quickly they will make the transition out of the bilingual program, Vela said.

“School in Mexico is compulsory only until 6th grade, and it is a common occurrence with newly arrived older students that they have not been to school in years,” Staben said. “Also, many come from rural areas and do not have much experience on which to draw.”

Vela, a native Texan, said she did not speak English when she entered school and remembers her 1st-grade teacher taping her mouth shut because she spoke Spanish too much. “We must not tell children their first language is not correct. It makes them ashamed of their parents,” she said.

Lambach was raised in a Hutterite colony in Canada, speaking a Tyrolean dialect. Children had two hours of German-language instruction plus an outside teacher who came and taught the other subjects in English. “That teacher was a a window of opportunity to another world,” she said. “I love language, and people should maintain their own heritage and language, but there are plenty of places like the church and the social club where that can be done. It is not the responsibility of the public institution to preserve the intimate culture.”

But having a bilingual program shows that a school system places a value on being able to think and speak in two languages, Staben countered. “In the past, too often, that was devalued. People thought that to be an American they had to speak only English when the truth is, to be an American, it would be nice to speak as many languages in addition to English as you can. It never diminishes you to know another language.

“I think that what happened before is that a lot of people just dropped out and you never heard from them again. If bilingual education is a good way to keep people studying, then that’s what we must do. There is no immigrant, even someone who has been here for only five days, who does not believe that English is the language they have to learn to survive.”



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