California raises language barrier Bilingual battle in schools

The English-speaking majority is acting to curb the onslaught of Spanish, writes Martin

BY THE middle of the next century – merely 52 years away – a quarter of the population of the United States will be of Hispanic origin. But already state and federal authorities are coming under pressure in conflicts between the growing minority of Spanish-speaking Hispanic Americans and an English-speaking majority fearful of creeping bilingualism.

Californians are about to vote on a measure which would cut back on local bilingual educational programmes. If adopted, the plan would force more than a million Hispanic children into intensive English programmes intended to protect English as the state’s unofficial single language.

Californians will vote on the issue in a referendum on June 2. Proposition 227 would require non-native English speakers in California schools to receive a year of English immersion instruction and then to move into regular classes where only English is spoken.

A waiver system would allow parents to insist on a more extended period of bi-lingual teaching and to obtain exemptions for children aged 10 and upwards. But both proponents and opponents acknowledge that few parents would take advantage of the waiver system, and that the vast majority of the 1.4 million non-native English speaking children in California will be affected.

Polls indicate at least 70 per cent of Californians support the measure. Significantly, so do more than half of the state’s Hispanic voters. But the strongest support, stronger even than that from white English speakers, comes from California’s Asian-American voters – US citizens of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese origin – three-quarters of whom say they will back Proposition 227.

The Clinton administration is uncertain how to respond. Instinctively, Mr Clinton and his education department are opposed to a measure which takes away the flexibility which local school boards have enjoyed on bilingual and other teaching methods. Mr Clinton also fears that the passing of the proposition would encourage English speaking voters in other states with big Hispanic populations – notably Florida and Texas – to copy California. Moreover, he fears that it may spark rightwing campaigners to launch other campaigns with a sharp ethnic edge.

On the other hand, both he and his vice-president, Al Gore, who hopes to run for the White House in 2000, understand the importance of California to Democratic hopes in this year’s November mid-term election and in the presidential contest two years from now.

This week, therefore, the administration announced that it opposed Proposition 227, but the White House left it to the federal education department to say so. The education secretary, Richard Riley, condemned the ballot as a counter-productive attempt to place children with different language needs in “an educational straitjacket”.

Mr Clinton’s low-profile stance resembles his approach in 1996 against California’s Proposition 209 ballot initiative to roll back affirmative action in state schools. Proposition 209 was passed comfortably, but Mr Clinton simultaneously won the state’s precious 54 electoral college votes in the presidential contest.



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