California, the land of strange change, this week sent quite a different message to the rest of the nation.

By a large majority, California voters dumped a 30-year-old system of bilingual education and replaced it with a program that immerses foreign-speaking students in English after one year of transition classes. Significantly, the dumping garnered large support from the state’s biggest foreign-speaking immigrant group, Hispanics.

The vote on Proposition 227 will shiver the timbers of the nation’s multiculturalists. Their dominance in the education establishment has saddled a generation of foreign-speaking children with debilitating bilingual programs that have left them unprepared to assimilate — and to succeed — in American society.

Recognizing the failures of the program, Chicago school officials last March stiffened their own English requirements, limiting bilingual classes to three years. In the face of disingenuous attacks accusing them of anti-immigrant sentiments, Chicago officials acted courageously, saying children languished too long in the bilingual programs, depriving them of the necessary ability to fluently speak and read the national language, English.

Proposition 227, however, opens the question of whether Chicago school officials went far enough. And whether it is time to junk state bilingual laws, which the Washington-based Center for Equal Opportunity calls the worst in the nation. Illinois law, among other things, makes it difficult for parents to keep their kids out of bilingual classes over the demands of school officials.

Aside from the impact on bilingual education programs across the nation, California voters accomplished two other, broader goods:

They reasserted the principle that parents and citizens ultimately are in charge of the education of American children, not isolated school bureaucracies and entrenched college education departments. Parents clearly understood how their children were being used as objects, to capture government grants and satisfy multicultural ideologues, and they finally said, “Enough.”

They reminded all Americans what America is about: a country founded not on notions of isolated factions, but on the principle of “one nation.” Assimilation is a word that has fallen into disfavor, thanks to the relentless attacks on the ideal by multicultural doctrinaires. But as the referendum demonstrates, they would have been wise to more closely consult with the millions of immigrants whose purpose in coming here specifically was to be assimilated into a society of freedom and opportunity.



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