Puerto Rico Teachers Resist Teaching in English

SAN JUAN, P.R., May 18—On an island where English is routinely spoken in government and business, heard and read in the news media and widely accepted as a ticket to economic opportunity, a plan to begin using it as a second language of instruction in public schools has prompted demonstrations by teachers and predictions of cultural suicide.

Teacher organizations say they oppose the Puerto Rico Department of Education’s “Project for Developing a Bilingual Citizen,” calling it a political rather than pedagogic move by a pro-statehood government that wants to make the island more palatable to Congress. Bills are pending in Washington to give Puerto Ricans the chance to vote on the island’s political status — whether statehood, independence or some form of association with the United States — by next year. Puerto Rico’s Spanish-speaking population is a major roadblock for proponents of making the island the 51st state. A nonbinding plebiscite in 1993 showed the island sharply divided between statehood and the current commonwealth status.

Teachers are also concerned that the school system is ill prepared to add English instruction for subjects like math and science, mostly because most teachers are not bilingual themselves. Plans call for phasing in English instruction, beginning when the new school year starts in August. Officials with the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico said that many teachers planned to sabotage the effort and that some were already hoarding Spanish textbooks to avoid using the new ones in English.

“I will refuse” to teach in English, said Digna Irizarry, 45, a math teacher who was among several hundred teachers protesting Friday in front of the Education Department with signs reading, “I’m Puerto Rican. I Speak Spanish” and “Math is difficult enough in Spanish, imagine in English.”

The controversy echoes the national debate over English-only laws in the United States, a debate prompted by a growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants. But unlike in the states, the invading language here is highly valued. Because of Puerto Rico’s nearly century-old political association with the United States, which has kept the island as a territory since it was ceded by Spain after the Spanish-American War in 1898, there are Federal courts and agencies here that do business in English. Jobs routinely require bilingual skills, and English textbooks and tests are the norm in many university programs.

Anglicisms, long part of the vocabulary of even the educated, keep going strong thanks to cable television and the Internet.

But Spanish is held as a pillar of Puerto Rico’s culture, and even the pro-statehood New Progressive Party maintains that it is nonnegotiable: even under statehood, Spanish and English would co-exist, the party promises.

The mother tongue, however, has hardly been immune to the forces of Puerto Rican politics. Just in 1991, pro-commonwealth Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon elevated it to sole official language, only to have the current Governor, Pedro J. Rossello, who is pro-statehood, obtain legislation two years later making English officially equal.

Statehood advocates put the need for bilingualism in practical terms. “We’re Puerto Ricans and U.S. citizens; we’re both,” said Carlos Romero Barcelo, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress. “Our language of birth is Spanish, but we also understand that to widen our opportunities we must speak both languages.”

But others see the latest effort as a not-so-veiled attempt to assimilate Puerto Rico, or at least to portray it as assimilated.

“Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking country, and to introduce in a massive way instruction in English is to try to Americanize us, to return to the past,” said Carmelo Delgado Cintron, the former director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, who now heads a group called Spanish First. “I don’t have anything against the United States, but we have a culture that should be valued and defended.”

Although English was the main language of public school instruction here in the first half of the century under governors sent from the mainland, Spanish replaced it for all courses except English class beginning in 1949. Census figures show that only about a quarter of the population of 3.7 million is bilingual.

Starting in August, the island’s public schools will intensify the learning of English by using textbooks in English for the first time for courses other than English, by extending English classes to 90 minutes from 50, and by giving priority to reading and writing in English in first, second and third grades. The Department of Education also plans to retrain and certify Puerto Rican teachers as specialists in English and bring teachers from the United States to offer technical assistance under exchange programs.

Education Secretary Victor Fajardo said that he was giving teachers the option of lecturing in either language and that “we agree that English will always be the second language of education.” But his goal, he said, is to introduce English in every course “so that we create a climate where English is a presence.”

Mr. Fajardo said his plan was a response to test scores last year indicating that 90 percent of the island’s 650,000 public school students lack basic English skills by the time they graduate from high school. He said he wanted public school students to have the same advantages as those in private schools.

But the emphasis on English comes as test scores are showing deficiencies in all other subjects, including Spanish. Teachers blame crowded classroom and shortages of books and other materials. And College Board test scores from 1980 to 1995 showed that while averages for English improved, those for Spanish were on the decline.

Although there is debate here about what the best age is to immerse children in a second language, a larger concern among many teachers is that English may be emphasized at the expense of Spanish and other subjects. They say the department would do better if it simply strengthened the existing English program.

“In three years we won’t know neither English or Spanish or math or science because we’re adding an element of complexity to students in their learning and an impediment for teachers to teach,” said Jose Eligio Velez, president of another teachers’ group, the Teachers Association.

At the Julio Selles Sola Elementary School here in San Juan, parents were generally supportive of more English instruction, although they said they knew little about the plan beyond published reports. Raul Rivera, 37, who has a 12-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter in the school, recalled how when he went to college he was forced to use a dictionary and ask for tutorial help to understand the English textbooks.

“I wouldn’t want my children to go through that experience,” said Mr. Rivera, who now teaches microbiology at the University of Puerto Rico. “But I’d like both English and Spanish teaching to be improved.”

The issue recently led to a rare outburst of English on the Senate floor by Senator Kenneth McClintock, a statehooder and the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a Texan father who grew up here.

“I wanted to make the point that there’s nothing bad about English,” Mr. McClintock said. The Senate minority leader, Antonio J. Fas Alzamora of the pro-status quo Popular Democratic Party, said the new policy was just one more example of the promotion of statehood with public money by the Rossello administration.

“They don’t want to accept reality,” he said of statehood proponents. “They want to disguise the fact that Puerto Rico is a distinct nation.”



Comments are closed.