The most interesting thing about state Education Commissioner Richard Mills’ proposal to boost the amount of English taught in New York bilingual programs is that it reveals how little English is taught to the 225,000 schoolchildren trapped in the bilingual-ed swamp.

It’s no secret that “bilingual” programs do next to nothing to prepare students to survive in an English-speaking environment. But it turns out that kids who can’t speak English are now required to spend only one 35-minute period a day learning the language. Mills would double or triple that.

Just one period of English instruction a day is obviously a bad joke: It’s the same amount of time many students spend to learn a smattering of a foreign language. This shows how unserious or even dishonest the defenders of bilingual-ed are when they promise that the programs will ensure that immigrant children eventually become fluent in English.

The bilingualists’ real aim, in fact, is to prevent assimilation into an American culture they see as oppressive. Since that view of America is profoundly wrong, the real result of their programs is to take opportunities away from non-English-speaking children, condemning many to lives at the bottom of the economic ladder.

We welcome anything that gives the victims of bilingual education a better chance tolearn English and join the mainstream of American life. But Mills’ proposal is too little, too late: The support for it from bilingual-ed advocates is sufficient proof of that.

Indeed, this looks like an effort by defenders of the status quo to concede the least possible ground – at a time when bilingual ed is rightly under withering attack.

New York state is raising the bar for a high-school diploma, so the failure of bilingual ed was about to become even more obvious. And the movement to end these disgraceful programs is growing nationwide.

Earlier this year, a large majority of California voters moved to end bilingual ed in favor of an English immersion program. And that shift came with considerable support from Latinos: People who’d learned the hard way that once in bilingual ed, a kid never gets out; people who didn’t want to see their children economically marginalized.

Bilingual ed has already blighted countless lives. Its pernicious effect on the prospects of minority students, and its condescending assumption that they cannot be expected to pick up English like European immigrant kids once did, may qualify bilingual ed as the most pervasive manifestation of real racism in America.

Why reform a program that robs immigrant children of the opportunities that are their right as Americans? The sooner New York state abolishes it, the better for everyone.



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