The forces of societal breakdown abound. In October, Canada narrowly avoided being torn apart at the seams when the citizens of Quebec defeated an independence referendum by 1 percent. And in Ohio, leaders of the former Yugoslavia recently met to try to combat the horror of an ethnic war that has raged for the better part of this decade.

With our common language and uncommon culture, the United States has successfully avoided the kind of Balkanization that appears on the rise worldwide. Lacking the centuries-old bonds of other nations, we have used our language, history and commitment to freedom and democracy to validate the American experiment. These are the forces that have held us together and allowed us to be diverse and yet united. But the United States is far from immune to the forces of division that we see around us. Today parts of our government and many of our intellectual elites are striving to create a new American–an American where our differences are more celebrated than our similarities.

Nowhere is the focus on what divides us made alarming than what we see happening in our schools. There, in the institution that helps make citizens out of our children, the most basic ingredient of American citizenship–the English language–is under assault.

I support bilingual education as it was originally intended: a transition tool to facilitate both cognitive learning and language acquisition for students whose first language was not English. The idea was that instead of having students fall far behind as they tried to learn English, bilingual programs would provide them with instruction in subjects like math, social studies and science in their native language while simultaneously giving them crash courses in English. The goal was to have students mainstreamed within several years.

Unfortunately, like so many programs that began with the best of intentions, bilingual education veered off course. Instead of mainstreaming students by helping them transition from their native language while simultaneously giving them crash courses in English, too often bilingual programs have turned into long-term alternative language education. The result: for millions of students across the country learning English is a long-forgotten goal. In fact, of the federal funds ostensibly used to teach children English, 75 percent is used for classes that teach only in a native language. The remaining funds support classes and programs rooted in English.

This is not to say that all bilingual programs are a failure. Some are actually very successful. In Dade County, Florida, for instance, there are bilingual programs that meet the lofty goals of a system that was supposed to help aspiring Americans assimilate. There, successful programs teach non-English speaking students English in a short time frame, and English-speaking students are taught another language from their earlier days. Unfortunately, Dade County is the exception rather than the rule.

Nationwide, students are being denied the opportunities that learning English brings. In California alone, more than 1 million children, a quarter of the state’s public school students, do not speak English well enough to understand classroom instruction. In New York, a group of parents recently brought a lawsuit against the school system that they say is consigning tens of thousands of immigrant children to bilingual education programs they do not want or need. And in an almost unbelievable situation in San Francisco, English-speaking, African-American students were placed in classes where part of the instruction was in Chinese. Meanwhile, Chinese-speaking students were in Spanish bilingual classes. These facts defy reason.

But the results of these programs are only too real. A program designed to give students a leg-up too often has consigned them to second-class citizenship where they find themselves unable to live outside of small ethnic communities with little hope for advancement.

Lengthy stays in bilingual classes help ensure that they are not blended into the mainstream.

English is more than a convenience, it is the language of our Constitution, the language of our currency, and the language of our great national debates. Even as we welcome immigrants of diverse backgrounds and cultures, we must remember that a common language is one of the strongest ties that binds us together as Americans. Learning English speeds the melting of our melting pot.

When immigrants come to America they come looking for a way to be part of our nation. English gives them that opportunity and ultimately is their visa to a new life. A primary goal of our schools must be to enable all those who come to our shores to become conversant in the language that will give them the opportunity to achieve that American dream. They will be the beneficiaries and so will the continuing American experiment.

U.S. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) is the Senate’s majority leader.



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