A recent proposal in the Dallas schools to teach Spanish and English in a “two-way” program is long overdue. Although the concern with learning English has understandably dominated discussions of language teaching in public schools, the preservation of Spanish, and other languages, has received scant attention.

The proposed program would place Spanish-dominant and English-dominant children in the same classes to learn each other’s languages, eventually resulting in fully bilingual students. Unlike traditional bilingual programs designed to move Spanish speakers into English, the new program would promote the maintenance of Spanish for those who already speak it and the acquisition of it by those who do not.

When current bilingual education was first introduced in the 1960s, some language activists opposed the manner in which it was implemented. The notion that Spanish should be used in a remedial program, rather than as enhancement, seemed to mark the language as subordinate to English. In equalizing the teaching of the two languages, the new program would promote the preservation of Spanish.

Because of the increase in Spanish-language radio, television, and newspapers, reflecting the use of the language by immigrants, the general public has not noticed the decline of Spanish among third- and fourth-generation Americans of Hispanic background.

According to UCLA sociologist David Lopez, as long ago as 1989 about 40 percent of Latinos nationally spoke only English at home by the third generation, suggesting that they spoke little Spanish at all. While this percentage indicated a rate of language persistence higher than that for Asian and traditional European ethnic groups, the trend remains disturbing.

As a member of the third generation, I can attest to that sad development in my own family. Among my siblings and cousins, few speak, read or write Spanish with proficiency. My nieces and nephews are virtually all monolingual in English.

As a parent who has struggled to teach his children Spanish, I am fully aware of the tremendous pressure to learn English. The dominant language surrounds my children. The news media, the schools, their friends all use English. Convincing my son and daughter that Spanish is worth the effort has been difficult.

While I’ve succeeded with my 13-year-old daughter, my 9-year-old son is still in doubt. As a parent with the advantage of college degrees in both languages, I fully understand why others with less formal training have failed to pass on the language.

There are those who argue that the teaching of non-English languages belongs in the home, not in the public schools. But my experience suggests that confining Spanish to the home suffocates it. Without institutional support, both public and private, language tends to die in the long run. Parents find it extremely difficult to pass on their legacy alone.

While pleasing to xenophobes and those fearing the disappearance of English, this development propels our country toward ignorance. With every child who loses Spanish, the country loses a skill, a skill greater than knowledge of a computer language, for a real language carries hundreds of years of tradition.

The case for knowing more than one language hardly needs to be made. Indeed, we spend millions of dollars teaching high school students “foreign” languages after the optimal ages for learning them have passed. The time to teach these languages is in elementary schools, as the Dallas schools propose.

As a native Californian, I was much saddened by the initiative passed there to end bilingual education, even as a transitional program. It is good to see that Texas, and Dallas in particular, now recognizes that Spanish embodies much of the heritage of the Southwest and that all our children should have a chance to learn it, maintain it or recover it.

John R. Chavez is a history professor and the director of ethnic studies at Southern Methodist University.



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