Until now there has not been a time in the history of American education when a minority in this nation of immigrants has imposed its language on the public schools.
This is the nub of the controversy over bilingual education, for the Bilingual Education Act of 1984, amended three times since it was first passed in 1968, provides "that a primary means by which a child learns is through the use of such child's native language and cultural heritage; that therefore large numbers of children of limited English proficiency have educational needs which can be met by the use of bilingual educational methods and techniques. …"
Although the presumption is that bilingual education is available to all minorities, the fact is that the program has been put in place by Hispanic politicos who have an axe to grind, and this does not advance the movement of children of Hispanic origin into the American mainstream. The bilingual method of instruction in regions where there are substantial numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants - New York, Miami, Los Angeles, southwestern Texas - retains children in the program for three to seven years. This is neither necessary nor educationally desirable, for there are alternative methods of teaching limited English proficient (LEP) children.
Not 'sink or swim'
There is not thought here that immigrant children be exposed to the "sink or swim" schooling that earlier immigrants underwent. Too many sank, although a great many survivors, including the very Hispanic legislators who are so keen for bilingual education, speak flawless English. And they never experienced a day of bilingual education in our public, private, or parochial schools.
Until bilingual education came to mean teaching children in Spanish as a transition to English, bilingualism meant the ability to speak English and a foreign language. Although this desirable ability is commonplace in many European countries, Americans for the most part speak English only. Fortunately, we have a large corps of immigrants, and second- and third-generation Americans, who have retained fluency in their mother tongue. Our public schools have been notably unsuccessful in teaching foreign languages, although they are offered in most secondary schools. Spanish, understandably, is the most popular foreign language offered in our public schools.
The availability of foreign language programs is not, however, to be confused with bilingual education.
Other minorities have been encouraged to seek their share of the bilingual pie, but there are too few teachers of Vietnamese, Lao, Chinese, Hmong, French, Navajo, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Italian, Lakota, Portuguese, Cherokee, Russian, Zuni, and Crow. As an example of the ridiculous extreme to which bilingual education has been extended, proponents of Indian tribal culture are seeking federal funds to create dictionaries of Indian languages that are now unwritten. Once the language is written, it is argued, tribal children can learn the language and the culture in public schools.
So remote is the probability of immigrant groups using the native language as a transition to learning English that even the most ardent Hispanic
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