The Debate on Bilingual Education

    

    The discussion surrounding bilingual education comprises diverse arguments, presenting various pros and cons from each perspective.  There are so many different opinions on this issue and has been a controversial topic in the educational system.  We read two different articles this week that had two different arguments in this controversial topic. 

    The first article was by Richard Rodriguez and in this article the argument is against bilingual education.  He draws up this argument based on his own personal experience, he was not provided any Spanish education in his classroom setting.  He describes the English language as the public language while describing his native language by private language. He experienced a slow progress in learning the English language due to his private Spanish language being spoken at home.  He felt a disconnect and felt alienated from his peers at school due to the language barrier.   At which point his  teachers felt the need to encourage his parents to only speak English at home in order to allow for a quicker and easier transition into English-based education.  His parents complied and only allowed the English language at home.  Once his parents transitioned to only speaking English, then there was consistency with the language spoken at school and home which allowed his language skills to sharpen.  As he made progress and learned the English language he felt closeness to his peers and community.  He felt this would not be possible without acquiring the public language.   On the other hand once he learned English, he felt a disconnect at home.  The author states "diminished by then was the special feeling of closeness at home."  This statement is what makes this argument hard to agree with because yes the public language was acquired but at the expense of his families closeness.  

    Now lets discuss the second article Teaching Multilingual Children by Virginia Collier, this article argues the opposite and discusses the benefits of bilingual education.  She focuses on allowing students to learn their second language, while preserving their native language. This facilitates the learning of the English language while maintaining the cultural value of both home and school.  Teaching bilingual education faces significant challenging, it requires the expertise of the teacher along with understanding of cultural differences.  It also requires extensive planning and organization skills, cooperation between teacher and parents ,  along with many other challenges.   Collier has come up with seven rules to teaching multilingual children and they are as follows.

1. "Be Aware that children use first language acquisition strategies for learning or acquiring a second language."
2. "Do not think of yourself as a remedial teacher expected to correct so-called "deficiencies" of your students.
3. " Don't teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language. 
4. "Teach the standard form of English and students' home language together with a appreciation of dialect differences to create an environment of language recognition in the classroom."
5. "Do not forbid young students from code-switching in the classroom. Understand the functions that code-switching serves."
6. "Provide a literacy development curriculum that is specifically designed for English-language learners.
7. "Provide a balanced and integrated approach to the approach to the four language skills:
8.  listening, speaking, reading and writing." 

    The Author also discusses different approaches for bilingual education.  The first one she discusses and states is the most successful one is the transitional bilingual education.  This is where the student first acquires fluency in their native language before acquiring fluency in the second language.  Once student is fluent in their native language, literacy skills transfer to the second language much easier.  The second approach is developing literacy in both languages simultaneously, this approach may initially cause some confusion but research indicates few long term academic problems.  The third approach and worst option is to dismiss the home language and place student in an all English language class setting.  Collier states "To dismiss the home language in literacy development instantly places the immigrant children at risk."  There are so many approaches to teaching bilingual education and dismissing the home language should not be an option.  As we all know it can be challenging but as teachers you have the power to support your student regardless of the type of bilingual education you provide.  Children should be supported and heard while increasing their English proficiency. 

    In my own experience I was born in Puerto Rico and came here to the United States when I was a few months old.  My mother only spoke Spanish at home, therefore when I entered the school system I only spoke Spanish and was placed in an ESL classroom.  I was then transitioned to an all English based classroom.  As a bilingual adult I can appreciate the bilingual education that I was offered, I am currently fluent in both Spanish and English and it has been so beneficial in my career.  Working in the hospital setting, it allowed me to communicate with my Spanish speaking patients and now working in the school setting, it allows to communicate effectively with my Spanish speaking students  and families. I was always proud to be Hispanic and always appreciated my culture and in part it has a lot to do with my parents and bilingual education.  I can reference back  to The Silenced Dialogue by Lisa Delpit, she makes the statement " As educators, we need to know our students.  We need to listen to their parents."  This is important because only then are we able to recognize and understand cultural differences and provide them with the best education.   In my opinion the need for bilingual education is great and it's reward could be quite advantageous.  The better we educate immigrant children, the more productive they will become in our society.  

           I thought I would add this interesting video that talks about the benefit's of a bilingual brain                                                     https://youtu.be/MMmOLN5zBLY