KEVIN NEWMAN, Host: California voters tomorrow will be deciding the future of millions of school children in their state and could be setting a precedent for how the entire nation approaches integrating immigrants into American society.
TEACHER: Buenos dias a todos.
KEVIN NEWMAN: (voice-over) California’s Proposition 227 would effectively end that state’s 25-year experiment with bilingual education.
TEACHER AND CLASS: (Reciting Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish)
KEVIN NEWMAN: (voice-over) It would force immigrant children to learn English quickly so they can learn in English with students in the mainstream. Now, some fear the change is too abrupt.
SUSAN MAHLER, School Principal: How in the world can we expect all children after one year to be ready to just transition over?
KEVIN NEWMAN: (voice-over) And many still believe that bilingual education is the best way for kids to learn English while keeping up with their other subjects. This little girl spoke almost no English three years ago.
STUDENT: I like it because I learned very fast.
KEVIN NEWMAN: (voice-over) But this former principal is among those who think bilingual education holds kids back.
Prof. RAUL HINOJOSA, University of California-Los Angeles: You have these students that are immersed in Spanish. It’s not bilingual. They teach the subject matter content in Spanish for three or four years before they begin to get into the English end of it.
KEVIN NEWMAN: (voice-over) Even those who simply want whatever’s best for the children are split on this.
MAN WITH GLASSES: Some of these kids have been in the courses for five and six and seven years. And there’s no improvement.
WOMAN WITH BROWN HAIR: Is not better to come everybody together and make the — stay with the bilingual program, and just fix it?
KEVIN NEWMAN: Interesting debate, let’s look at it further. Joining us now from San Francisco is Ron Unz. He’s a businessman, former California gubernatorial candidate, who co-wrote Proposition 227 and chairs the English for the Children campaign. And from Los Angeles, Teresa Bustillos, she is a former judge, now with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. And she and the group oppose Proposition 227. Good morning to you both.
TERESA BUSTILLOS, Proposition 227 Opponent: Good morning.
RON UNZ, Co-Author, Proposition 227: Great to be here.
KEVIN NEWMAN: OK, let’s assume we all want to do what’s best for the kids. Ron, why don’t we begin with you? What’s — why is it better to immerse people totally in English, rather than ease them into it?
RON UNZ: Well, the current system is just a dismal failure. If you look at the official statistics from the state office of bilingual instruction, a quarter of all the children in California public schools don’t know English. And of the ones who don’t know English, each year only 5 or 6 percent learn English. Ninety-five percent of the children who start a given school year not knowing English have not learned it by the end of that school year. And much of the failure is because of the Spanish-only program called bilingual education.
KEVIN NEWMAN: But how do you know immersion will be better?
RON UNZ: Well, it’s the method used in every other major country in the world that has a large immigrant population. Germany and France and Britain and Australia and Canada and Israel all teach children the national language as quickly as possible once they begin school. None of them use what we call bilingual education.
In the United States, the Catholic, the parochial schools use intensive English, and they don’t use native language instruction. And the results are much better than the bilingual programs in the public schools.
KEVIN NEWMAN: All right, Teresa, kids do learn languages easier than adults do. Can they do it through immersion?
TERESA BUSTILLOS: It’s not a matter of can they do it through immersion, it’s a matter of the program that Mr. Unz has designed. It’s a program that’s only going to give kids 180 days to learn English before they’re transferred to classrooms taught completely in English.
There’s absolutely no research support for the proposition that kids can learn enough English, be literate in English, to compete in English-only classrooms in 180 days.
The problem with Mr. Unz’s proposal is that it’s a one- size-fits-all solution that doesn’t take into consideration local needs, local students, local resources, and doesn’t build upon those rich local resources to ensure that our children are going to learn English and learn academics like math and science, because it’s math and science that are so important if we’re going to compete in this technological age. And the initiative is silent about academics.
KEVIN NEWMAN: OK, but Teresa, I mean, you’ve had 25 years of trying to get bilingual education to reach these aims. The most recent numbers show that it’s just not working in a large number of cases.
TERESA BUSTILLOS: But you know what? Only 30 percent of the limited English proficient children in California are even in bilingual education programs, and there are numerous examples of bilingual education programs that work. There are also numerous examples of other programs in this state that work. This initiative is going to wipe out every single program in California except those that fit this very rigid, 180 days, only one chance to learn English or you’re out.
KEVIN NEWMAN: OK, Ron, I should give you the chance to respond to that.
RON UNZ: Well, a lot of that is nonsense. The initiative doesn’t say 180 days anywhere in the initiative. It says for young children it normally should take a year or less to learn enough English to be mainstreamed in with the other kindergarten students. Now, if it takes more time, they can stay in this intensive English program for a longer period of time.
Also, the current system is just a dismal failure. The children are not learning English today. And, in fact, for Latino children who don’t know English in elementary school, approximately 70 percent are in the Spanish-oriented programs.
And Latino immigrants are the one group given a lot of bilingual education, and they’re one immigrant group that does worse than all the other immigrant groups, because the others are taught English while Latino children are taught Spanish.
KEVIN NEWMAN: Well, Teresa, let me ask you, I mean, English is the language of commerce, increasingly, in the world. It’s the language of computers. Isn’t it better to have these kids better at English faster?
TERESA BUSTILLOS: What is better is for these kids to know English well. If they’re going to compete in schools, if they’re going to compete in this global economy, they have to know how to speak English well. And while Ron may wish that his initiative said what he just said it said, it does not. It specifically says, “normally one school year.” One school year in California means 180 days, and he knows it.
So if he’s reconstructing his initiative, that’s wishful thinking on his part.
KEVIN NEWMAN: Well…
TERESA BUSTILLOS: And that is really the issue. These kids are only going to have one year to learn English, and it’s silent about academic achievement. It also appropriates $50 million to teach adults English if they simply pledge to tutor their kids.
KEVIN NEWMAN: Ron, last word to you in this case. Do you think if this passes tomorrow, and the polls show that it might, that it’ll have implications in the rest of the country?
RON UNZ: Tremendously so. Half of all the bilingual programs in the country are in California. They’re a dismal failure here. If they end in California, I think they’ll be reconsidered everywhere else in the United States.
KEVIN NEWMAN: OK, Ron Unz, Teresa Bustillos, thanks very much for being with us this morning. We appreciate it.
TERESA BUSTILLOS: Thank you.
RON UNZ: Thank you.
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