California elections & bilingual ed

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Jun 4 12:09:10 PDT 1998


Michael Perelman wrote:
>Look, nobody reads the propositions. Framing is everything. This one was
>framed, do you want the children to be able to learn English. The hispanics,
>like most groups, wanted their children to learn English.
>
>Now, they get to learn English in 180 days; that's better than Berlitz can
>do.

It should have been called a 'Sink or Swim' proposition. I think that most children--with the exception of those who have an extraordinary talent for foreign language acquisition and those whose parents can afford to hire tutors--will need more than 180 days to learn English.

Also, I wonder if bilingual education may not have been falsely identified as a cause of 'educational failure,' because it can be used to divert attention from questions such as students' families' economic circumstances, student health, public school funding, the teacher-student ratio, and other class questions.

Further, there are bilingual programs, and there are bilingual programs, so a better alternative to existing bilingual education programs might have been simply a better funded, more properly staffed, and more effectively structured bilingual education program. It is possible that bilingual education fares always worse than English-only education, as Wojtek claims, but such evidence has not been presented. On the other hand, there is no conclusive evidence that bilingual education always benefits immigrant children more than English-only education does either, I believe. However, the fact of the matter is that a direct referendum isn't a forum where such consideration of educational effectiveness can be examined and discussed.

My concern as a teacher is to what extent politics of this kind will further affect what and how teachers can do in our classrooms. What's next? A proposition that pits phonics against a whole language method and bans the latter? What of the subject matters of teaching?

Yoshie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list