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Memories from the trenches of bilingual education Robert Kimball
The column by Reps. Bill Goodling and Frank Riggs on "The damage of bilingual education" (Op-Ed, July 20) reminded me of my final teaching days at a high school in Mexico. I was hired to teach, in English, a range of social studies subjects normally taught in Mexican preparatory schools. My pupils were Spanish-speaking Mexican children. Their parents wanted these children to improve their English while learning the required subject matter. Despite a steep reduction in salary, the years I spent in Mexico were by far the most rewarding of my teaching career. The children were disciplined, attentive, respectful, studious and, most surprising of all, happy. In my 13 years as a teacher in American high schools, I had never before seen whole classes of happy kids. There was one notable exception, a young American Hispanic girl enrolled in the school for a semester by her divorced Anglo father. He had recently gained custody and was doing some independent contracting for a Mexican company. The girl had spent eight years in American schools. She was 14 years old and could speak only the most rudimentary English. Her father brought her to our school hoping the English-only classes would help. Her English was so bad, however, that I broke the English-only rule to try to help her. My Spanish was new, poor and heavily accented, and she couldn't understand me. So after a few days, I took some of the Mexican students aside and asked if they would try to help her with occasional explanations in Spanish. I'll never forget the sad curiosity with which one of them said to me: "You know, she doesn't really speak Spanish, either." |