WOULD you support a ballot initiative to eliminate bilingual education in our state’s public school system? If former California gubernatorial candidate and wealthy high-tech businessman Ron Unz has his way, you will get that chance in next year’s election.

Last month, Unz quietly filed an initiative with the Attorney General’s Office called ”English Language Education for Children in Public Schools.”

This initiative, with rare exceptions, would mandate that ”all children in California public schools be taught English by being taught in English” and would require that ”all children be placed in English-language classrooms.”

The term ”bilingual education” is misleading. A more accurate description for that term would be ”primary language education,” because students in these programs are currently taught exclusively in their native language. Students today can spend up to four years learning in Spanish in our public schools as if they were in their native county, with only 30 to 60 minutes per day of English instruction.

This initiative would do away with that harmful practice once and for all.

All classes in public schools would be taught in English, allowing for a short transition period in a special ”sheltered English immersion program” for students not yet proficient in the English language.

Such a proposition will most certainly generate an explosive debate that could rival the storm surrounding last year’s Proposition 209, and a number of Republican leaders are justifiably concerned that this potentially polarizing debate will come at a time when the GOP is engaged in intense efforts at reaching out to immigrant communities.

These leaders suspect that as well intentioned as Unz might be, some groups will inevitably paint this proposition as a GOP assault on immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants, and it will be fiercely resisted by various entrenched interest groups and bureaucracies who have an ideological commitment or financial stake in bilingual education.

I am not in agreement with all of the specifics in Unz’s proposition, and I understand and identify with the political sensitivity that Republican leaders are expressing.

But I must express my wholehearted support for the basic concept of this initiative, which is the exact kind of bold, principled, political courage that is so necessary if we are ever going to re-establish a degree of sanity in our educational system and in our rapidly fragmenting society in general.

Anything worthy comes with risks. The challenge is to minimize those risks and achieve the positive objective at the same time.

Ron Unz had a different perspective:

”I view this as an issue that can help determine the future of America. Think about it. Over the last 1,000 years of civilization, the United States of America is the only example of a society which is large, successful and multiethnic. And we succeed because we provide a system of values and language which everyone can adopt and which allows us to transcend our places of origin.

”Now you have groups growing up in America who are discouraged from learning the language that is the glue of our society and the key to opportunity. I think that has the power to seriously damage America. And it would be a shame if America is harmed by something which could be cured with political courage.”

Courage?

”The courage I speak about is the courage to defend a position you know is right, even if the other side calls you all sorts of ugly names. Because if those of us who believe in the basic American values of equal rights and opportunity for all are frightened off the field of public debate by narrow interest groups masquerading as the representatives of tolerance and pluralism we will deserve whatever we inherit. We cannot sacrifice fundamental principles on the alter of short-term political considerations, as important as they are.”

Bilingual education has proven to be a monumental failure.

It is a major obstacle on an immigrant child’s road to assimilation and integration. Over 1.2 million California school children, mostly Latino immigrants, are now classified as not proficient in English. Yet each year only 5 percent of school children not proficient in English are found to have gained proficiency at the end of the school year. Thus, incredibly, the current system of language education has an annual failure rate of 95 percent.

The state of California spends, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars per year on bilingual education.

The exact amount depends on how many students are enrolled in the program, thus giving an incentive for educators to put as many children as possible in these non-English programs to bolster their annual budget and perpetuate what has become a thriving bilingual-education industry.

And what are the results of 20 years of bilingual education?

California’s Department of Education shows that while the number of students in bilingual programs more than doubled from 1983 to 1993, the number making it into English proficient classrooms actually dropped by 5 percent.

Latino students have consistently scored the lowest of any ethnic group in SAT tests and have the highest dropout rate (40 percent).

Anybody who has the gall to defend such a record and who defends a system that has produced such a record is a danger to kids and should not be involved in the education system in the State of California.

And who suffers the consequences of this colossal failure? We all do. But particularly, the cheated children of immigrant parents, who will be unprepared for higher education and who will enter the work force unprepared to compete.

Most self-appointed pro-immigrant organizations that are the primary promoters of bilingual education defend the program as the best way to gradually introduce non-English-speaking children into English-taught classrooms. Some have also expressed that bilingual education is an effective way to preserve the child’s ”cultural identity.”

But clearly, the ”gradual approach” is a failure. Numerous studies have shown that the earlier and more intensely a child is exposed to a language, the better chance he or she has to become proficient in that language. The longer the process of linguistic assimilation is dragged out, the more difficult it becomes for the child to learn the language.

It is the state’s duty to help prepare these children for the real world in the United States of America. To help provide them with the skills necessary to become productive members of society, English skills are a basic necessity for anyone hoping to succeed in America.

In a survey of Latino parents conducted last year by the Center for Equal Opportunity, a strong majority of Latino parents indicated that learning to read, write and speak English is the most important educational goal that they have for their children. An overwhelming majority expressed a wish that their children learn English as soon as possible, before any other language, including their native language.

They recognize that the English language is the language of science, technology, international business and economic opportunity. They know that without English-language skills, their children have very little chance of assimilating and becoming productive members of American society and a very large chance at getting caught in a cycle of poverty and despair. Interest groups will howl, but they don’t represent the concerns of the vast majority of Americans or of the vast majority of new immigrants for that matter.

Bilingual education is a patronizing and insulting disaster that needs to be done away with, the sooner the better. Whether Unz’s initiative is the answer should be the subject of debate.

EDITOR-NOTE: Joe C. Gelman contributes a weekly column to the Sunday Viewpoint section. He is the former president of the Los Angeles Board of Civil Service Commissioners and an original sponsor of the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209). Readers can contact him at (818) 713-3632 or by e-mail at J-0-Gmsn.com.



Comments are closed.