Hispanic Culture – Bilingual Education

Jeffrey Hastings

Span/502

January 30, 2011

Melissa Sabbagh

Abstract

In a world seemingly shrunken by the technological realities of air travel and the Internet, the issue of

language education at the K-12 level might seem to be a “no-brainer:” The assumption might be that

the more languages a student learns, the better off she'll be in a global economy and increasingly

multicultural world.

In the United States, though, it's apparently not that simple.

Though bilingual education, the practice of educating American immigrants in both their native tongue

and in English, dates back to the 1840s in the United States, it has been a contentious issue from the

very start.

The purpose of this paper is not to judge pro or con rationales regarding bilingual education, but merely

to list arguments on both sides of the ongoing debate.

Arguments Against Bilingual Education

In an essay published originally in 2004 as Do Immigrants Benefit America? And republished in 2008

in Gale's Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center database under the title Bilingual Education is

Deterimental to Everyone, Peter Duignan lays out nearly all of the most popular arguments against

bilingual education. Recognizing that immigrants are historically, what the United States is made of,

he asserts that the recent wave of Hispanic immigrants changed that “melting pot” paradigm by

resisting assimilation into American culture. “By insisting on preferential treatment,” he added,

“especially in the area of bilingual education, immigrants place their children at a disadvantage and

threaten the unity of the nation” (Duignan, 2008).

In the course of his essay, Duignan claims that, unlike previous European immigrants, Hispanic

immigrants have come to America more quickly and in greater numbers “especially through illegal

entrance” (Duignan, 2008). He goes on to claim that they are harder to integrate than early 20th century

immigrants and that there are “fewer pressures on them to assimilate and learn English” (Duignan,

2008).

So, he asserts, “bilingual education, multiculteralism, and ethnic clustering slow up the workings of the

so-called melting pot” (Duignan, 2008).

These three factors, he says, make the assimilation process slower and less successful. “Today's

children will take three generations to assimilate” he adds (Duignan,2008).

Duignan also argued that bilingual education became “Spanish cultural maintenance,' and left students

lagging behind their English-only peers. He quotes Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal

Opportunity, in the same essay, as claiming that “Latinos taught in bilingual programs test behind peers

taught in English-only classrooms, drop out at a high rate, and are trapped in low-skilled, low-paying

jobs” (Duignan, 2008).

Arguments in Favor of Bilingual Education

In an article entitled Let's Not Say Adios to Bilingual Education published in U.S. Catholic and

responding to California's rejection of bilingual education in their 1998 passage of Proposition 227,

Lourdes Rovira provides sweeping counterpoint to Duignan's popular misgivings, pointing out the

more human and individual benefits of bilingual education.

She begins by stating the obvious: “To learn English, students need not forget the language they bring

to school—be it Spanish, Vietnamese or Urdu” (Rovira, 1998). Expanding, she asserts that studying a

second language is a right that belongs to all students, that languages expand childrens' cognitive

development, and that “knowing more than one language is not an impediment to intellectual capacity”

(Rovira, 1998). If it were, she argues, the most children outside the U.S, would be intellectually

inferior, the majority of them being bilingual (Rovira, 1998). She adds (Rovira, 1998):

Students are enabled—not disabled—by being bilingual; they are empowered by knowing

more than one language. The American experience is strengthened, not weakened, by

citizens who can cross languages and cultures. The United States can no longer afford to

remain a monolingual country in a multilingual world. Being bilingual and biliterate not only

gives people a political and economic advantage, it also allows them to be bridges between

people of different cultures.

Rovira also mentions, and perhaps understates, the fact that for a non-English speaker, bilingual

education can help preserve a sense of pride in one's native culture while helping also helping allay

the tremendous fear that can accompany sudden immersion into another. In her article, Bilingual Ed

Saved My Life, published in New Youth Connections, Jia Lu Yin, wrote of the paralyzing fear

Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants often feel when arriving in the United States, relating that

many immigrants feel lonely and unwanted, and often have an urge to return to the home of their

native language, unless bilingual education provides a comforting buffer. (Yin, 1992.)

Conclusion

This paper was intended only to list arguments of both sides of the bilingual education in the U.S.

debate, so no conclusion is called for. Research does show that the time-frame of this debate is very

important though, as it seems to shift with national sentiments. Bilingual education, for example

began with German immigrants in the 1840s but became contentious in the years leading up to

World War I. A similar tightening of tolerance for other cultures took place during World War II. As

anti-immigration sentiment escalated in the American Southwest beginning in the 1980's, then so did

the tenor of the bilingual education discussion. The debate about the merits and demerits of bilingual

education continues to be heated today, even in the face of an increasingly multicultural America

and undeniably global economy, where answers might seem fairly obvious.

References

Duignan, P. (2008). Bilingual Education Is Detrimental to Everyone. In J. D. Ginn (Ed.), At

Issue.Bilingual Education. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. (2008). (Reprinted from , n.d.)

(Reprinted from World & I, February 2004, 19, 20-25)

Rovira, L. (1998, November). Let's not say adios to bilingual education. U.S. Catholic, 63(11), 22+.

Yin, J. (1992, December). Bilingual Ed Saved My Life. New Youth Connections, 15.