Bilingual Education

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the initiatives taken by California, Arizona, and Massachusetts to replace bilingual education with English immersion programs are perhaps understandable in the light of mixed research findings on the efficacy of bilingual education. The author points out that there is a far stronger case for retaining and persisting with the system of bilingual education because pedagogical practice has now proven that instruction in children's native languages ultimately pays dividends in cognitive and academic skills. The paper relates that, unfortunately, it appears that many bilingual programs and educators may have become more concerned with teaching young immigrant children their native language and culture than with teaching them English so that they could be successfully absorbed into mainstream schools.

From the Paper:

"Indeed, removing the effect of ideological issues will allow for a sharper analysis of the case for or against bilingual education, including a retracing of the reasons going in its favor such as the fact that the desirability of bilingual education has been repeatedly proven in a wide body of scholarly research. For one, there is the undeniable fact that children who receive educational instruction in a second language experience considerable difficulties in school of both an academic as well as a social acceptance and self-esteem nature. Secondly, as pointed out in a pioneering study by UNESCO, the fact is that the native language is the best medium for initial instruction as it is the primary medium through which a child learns about his or her cultural environment."

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