Twilight's Children

Debate still raging on bilingual education

CALEXICO, Calif. – No issue in the debate over how best to educate Hispanic children generates more heat than bilingual education.

Critics say it keeps Spanish-speaking children out of the mainstream in the United States because they do not learn English quickly enough.

Some critics go so far as to say that bilingual education is helping to nurture a Spanish-speaking nation within the United States. They point to Canada’s recent separatist referendum pushed by French-speakers in the province of Quebec as a warning about what a dual-language culture could mean for the United States. But most proponents argue that teaching Spanish-speaking and other children in their native languages, at least at first, is the best way to ensure that they will succeed in school.

And they add that succeeding in school is the best way to make sure they succeed in society.

“”Some people say immerse them in English. But they can’t even read and write in their own language, so how do you immerse them? ” says Maria Olmos, administrator of the Newcomers Center for immigrant children at Belmont High School in Los Angeles.

“”The stronger your Spanish, the more successful you are in English. ”

Besides, in an age of growing business and trade ties between the United States and Latin America, fluency in both English and Spanish should be seen as an economic asset rather than a national security threat, says Hulberto Saenz, the principal of the George I. Sanchez alternative high school in Houston.

“”The (non-Hispanics) who are bilingual are lauded, applauded, recognized,” Saenz says. “”If they speak Spanish, it’s good, and when we speak Spanish it’s bad. There’s got to be an in-between in there somewhere. ”

People on both sides of the issue agree that bilingual education up to now has largely disappointed.

“”Too many bilingual programs push the students through so they don’t get the benefits,” says Maria Robledo Montecel, the executive director of the Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio. “”The conversation we should be having is how to make bilingual education work better rather than whether we should have bilingual education. ”

The bilingual argument all but disappeared years ago in Calexico when the school board decided to offer most courses in Spanish.

Educating Spanish-speaking children is hardly a minority issue in Calexico. a farm and manufacturing town of 20,000 people on the U.S.-Mexican border about halfway between San Diego and the Arizona line.

Nearly all of the 6,700 students in its schools are Latino.

Forty percent were born in Mexico, school officials say, and most have a poor command of English.

Isolated from the rest of California by desert and the long farm belt of the Imperial Valley, most everyone in Calexico is linked by family or business to the much larger neighboring Mexican city of Mexicali, which has about 1 million inhabitants. Many students arrive at Calexico’s public school having never spoken English and with parents who speak it only passably, if at all.

“”We need all the help we can get because we live in a community where they really don’t need to speak English,” says Arnold Pachter, who teaches English to Spanish-speaking students at Calexico High School.

School officials say that burgeoning immigration out of Mexico and the rapid growth of the local Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American population forced a change in their thinking about bilingual instruction.

Standardized test scores plummeted. Frustrated students dropped out in droves. Children were failing for want of language.

The school board’s decision to offer most instruction in Spanish “”was not a philosophical decision on their part,” says school Superintendent Roberto Moreno, a 49-year-old Calexico native.

“”It was pragmatic: Where the hell do you put a 15-year-old kid from Mexico who doesn’t know a word of English? How do you give him access (to education)? ”

School officials say that since they could do little about the reason for the flood of Spanish-speaking children, they decided to try to do something about the experiences those students had in school.

“”We began to realize a long time ago that we can’t control those issues (like immigration),” says Emily Palacio, Calexico’s assistant school superintendent for instructional services. “”We can get more bang for the buck by preparing the kid academically regardless of the language. ” Superintendent Moreno says he wishes the children all could speak English fluently. “”But so what? ” he says. “”We have to accept them where they are. We try to open up as much of our system to them as possible. ” Although the Calexico educators say they prefer to have children learn in English-only classes, students can be taught any subject throughout high school in whichever language they prove more competent. Palacio says that rather than thinking of it as teaching bilingually, she and other school officials regard their program as simply offering the best education they can to all.

“”We want kids to speak English, but we want them to have something substantive to say (when they do),” Palacio says.

“”If we just concentrate on (teaching in English), we will continue to have bi-ignorant kids. ” It seems to be working. In recent years, less than 15 percent of Calexico’s students have dropped out, school officials say, about a third of the rate in inner-city high schools elsewhere in the Southwest.

About 20 percent of the graduates go on to four-year colleges, Palacio says, and an additional 60 percent go to the local two-year community college. The percentages soar over the national averages.

The university track record of the Calexico graduates has proved spotty. Schools officials acknowledge that a lot of their students still struggle in their first year of college and that many drop out. But the officials say they remain convinced that their program has given students a chance for success that was denied in years past.

“”After they get into college, they are on their own,” Palacio says. “”They’re going to make it or not. But at least they got their foot in the door. ”

Moreno, the school superintendent, says, “”Of the kids who go to the four-year colleges direct, they’re going to stay.

They’re going to make it. ”

Most bilingual programs nationwide are geared toward students in the first years of school.

Proponents say that learning in Spanish helps young children acquire the basic knowledge they need to succeed in higher grades and saves them from failing at school because they don’t understand the course work.

“”They’re learning a new language, and they’re trying to learn everything else, and they get behind,” says Cecilia Wong, a grade-school teacher in Calexico. “”It’s too hard. ”

Early success is important because once children fall behind a grade in the first few years of school, they often fail to complete high school, says Houston’s Principal Saenz, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Latino dropouts.

While many non-English-speaking students managed to get an education in U.S. public schools before bilingual education became popular decades ago, far too many others were lost, says Saenz, a San Antonio native who attended public schools there in the 1940s and ’50s.

“”You just sat there (and) you either learned by osmosis or you dropped out,” he says.



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