U.S. Plan On Bilingual Education Facing Criticism Over Approach

CHICAGO, Sept. 18—The last in a round of hearings on proposed Federal regulations for the teaching of bilingual education ended here today after two weeks of testimony in six cities.

Education Department officials must now sift tens of thousands of pages of transcripts and supporting data to try to figure out how to resolve a controversy around which the new agency has decided to wage its first major battle.

Judging by the differences of opinion voiced at the hearings, echoes of the debate are destined to reverberate for a long time, no matter what form the final regulations take.

The likelihood of litigation over the regulations was underscored in testimony here by S. John Davis, the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Virginia, who called the proposal ”an abuse by the U.S. Department of Education of the states’ responsibilities to make decisions that best suit their particular circumstances.” Mr. Davis submitted a letter from the Attorney General of Virginia charging that the proposed regulations exceeded the intent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Language in the act banning discrimination on the ground of national origin is the basis upon which the Education Department formulated the regulations.

Dispute Is Over Remedy

Despite the conflict over the proposed remedy, educators and public officials seem generally to agree with Federal officials that some type of special attention is not only legally required but also desirable for students who do not have English-language backgrounds. Few organized groups or school districts still maintain that such students should be assigned to classes without regard for their language difficulties, as was the practice in many schools until the last decade.

Even in Virginia and other areas where strong criticism of the proposed regulations has been voiced, the argument is not over whether something should be done but over how it should be done.

The plight of young people who have received insufficient help in reaching proficiency in English was described by Esperanza Villarreal of Chicago’s 18th Street Development Corporation. The federally financed project trains youths, most of them Mexican-Americans raised in Spanish-speaking homes, for construction trades.

Though all had to complete the 10th grade in order to be eligible for the program, 21 of the 45 young people in a recent group scored at the sixth-grade level or lower on a standardized reading test.

”As a job developer and counsellor for the past four years,” Miss Villarreal said, ”I have seen many capable and intelligent people turned away from jobs because of the lack of their fluency in English.”

‘Linguistic Prejudice’ Seen

John C. Maxwell, deputy director of the National Council of Teachers of English, told a hearing here that bilingual programs alone were not enough to deal with the ”linguistic prejudice” of teachers whom students will encounter when they enter the regular curriculum.

Mr. Maxwell called for a huge effort to educate teachers at all grade levels so that they would be more sensitive to the language and cultural heritage of students who had undergone bilingual education.

Such a costly proposal as training mainstream teachers to be more sensitive, however, is regarded as a luxury at a time when school districts are already complaining that it will cause severe financial strain for them to comply with the current proposal.

The position of the Chicago Board of Education was typical of school boards around the country when it challenged the Federal Government to provide appropriations to back up its mandate.

”What is the cost of complying with the proposed rules’ identification procedures in a city with a student population composed of over 90,000 pupils from a non-English-language background, representing 139 distinct languages?” Martha Jantho, a member of the Chicago Board of Education, asked Federal officials at the hearing.



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