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Latest installment of series focuses on bilingual education

By Daily Bruin Staff

May 15, 1997 9:00 p.m.

Friday, 5/16/97 Latest installment of series focuses on
bilingual education EDUCATION PBS show taped at UCLA probes role of
issue in schools

By J. Sharon Yee Daily Bruin Contributor The Merrow Report at
UCLA again focused its discussion Wednesday afternoon on children’s
educational issues, this time on bilingual education and its
presence in elementary schools across the nation. The segment,
entitled "Bilingual Education: Teaching in Tongues?" featured guest
speaker Kenji Hakuta, a professor of education at Stanford
University and a renowned researcher in the field of social and
cognitive language development. Led by PBS correspondent John
Merrow, the discussion centered around concerns regarding the state
of bilingual education in public schools today and how it can be
improved. "How did bilingual become a bad word?" asked Merrow at
the start of the program, prompting Hakuta to begin his comments
with a kind of history lesson on the origins of bilingual education
in the United States. In Hakuta’s book, " The Mirror of Language,"
he quotes a 1926 author who asserted that the "use of foreign
language in the home is one of the chief factors in producing
mental retardation in young children." Such a belief was derived
from scores on intelligence tests taken in the early 1900s, where
children of immigrant families performed poorly compared to their
English-proficient peers. "The conclusions made by psychologists of
the time revealed that bilingualism was the cause of poor
performance," Hakuta said. "When really the question was whether
the test accurately measured intelligence or English comprehension
skills," he continued. Hakuta, who received his bachelor’s and
doctorate degrees from Harvard University, further explained that
attitudes towards bilingual education are contingent upon who it is
that happens to be bilingual and how it is that those people come
to acquire a second language. He described the differences between
two types of bilingualism: The first is "elite bilingualism,"
referring to those who become bilingual by choice, like those
involved in French immersion programs in Canada. In comparison,
"folk bilingualism" refers to those who do not derive status from
being bilingual, such as a multi-lingual immigrant cab driver in
Washington, D.C., Hakuta said. "The period from 1900-60 is best
characterized, in terms of bilingual linguistics, as a period of
drought," Hakuta said, attributing the low rates of enrollment in
foreign language classes in schools to increased xenophobia and
World War II politics. The 1960s, however, was a time when a number
of events occurred, helping to improve attitudes towards bilingual
education. An influx of Cuban refugees, considered to be the "cream
of the crop" of Cuban educators, established the first two-way
bilingual school in the country, using Spanish and English.
Ideally, a two-way bilingual school enrolls half non-English
speakers, while the other half consists of native English speakers.
Taught in both languages, the goal of the school is to encourage
bilingualism in both groups of students. In the case of the
Cuban-run school, many English-speaking families saw this as a good
opportunity to attend a school taught by well-educated teachers and
consequently enrolled their students. Phil Ender, an employee of
the Department of Education, described his experience with the
Culver City Immersion Program, a two-way school, where his children
are currently enrolled. "Why doesn’t a program like this draw more
people from Spanish-speaking families?" he asked, noting that
around 95 percent of the families who have children enrolled are
English-speaking. Hakuta partly attributed this incongruity to
social class differences, as middle-class families may be more
inclined to participate in such a program. Merrow, too, discussed
the positive impact of a Spanish immersion program on his now-adult
children. "My son, who is now 28, was telling me that he considers
himself a true bilinguist because he often finds himself
subconsciously thinking in Spanish," he said. In response to
Merrow’s comments, Concepcion Valadez, a professor at the School of
Education, recalled the benefits of bilingual education for native
English speakers that she witnessed in a pilot program in the
Oakland area. "There was a line a mile long of English-speaking
parents fighting for 40 spots," she said, contrasting their
enthusiasm to the Spanish-speaking parents who she had to plead
with to get them to enroll their children. The English-speaking
children were highly-motivated students, whereas the
Spanish-speaking ones were recommended by their teachers because of
poor performance. Valadez concluded that while the English-speaking
students realized many exciting things could happen in another
language, the Spanish-speaking ones concentrated on staying in
school and improving academically. Ultimately, both groups of
students benefited. Perhaps the largest initiator of bilingual
education programs, however, was the Civil Rights movement of the
1960s, where legislators enacted Title VII, or the Bilingual
Education Act, written specifically with the Hispanic population in
mind, which guaranteed such programs to non-native speakers.
"Though such laws have been modified since, the programs are
primarily geared towards predominantly poor populations," Hakuta
said, emphasizing the fact that the driving issue behind bilingual
education has more to do with poverty than language. In addition to
the two-way programs, there are other alternatives to bilingual
education, some more controversial than others. The most popular of
these is called the transitional bilingual program, where students
are put into English-only classrooms and forced to, as Hakuta said,
"either sink or swim." Another one incorporates the native language
into the learning of English, in efforts to preserve, both
languages. A third is English as a Second Language (ESL), where
children attend classes with their English-speaking peers and
attend separate ESL sessions on a weekly basis. Today, there are
over three million bilingual students in the United States. Only 40
percent receive instruction in their native language while the
remaining 60 percent attend ESL classes or do not receive any help
at all, estimated Hakuta. "Which method works the best?" Merrow
asked. "On average, programs that utilize the native language seem
to work better," Hakuta said. "But because individual programs each
have their own policies, there’s huge variability within programs,"
he added. Xochitl Perez, a second-year education graduate student,
voiced concern over the apparent contradiction between educational
policies in lower and higher levels of education. "What happens
when we spend all our resources to eradicate native languages in
elementary schools, but then turn around in the college level and
require students to be bilingual?" she asked. Hakuta responded by
saying that many Spanish-speaking students do indeed retain some of
their Spanish-speaking skills through high school, as middle and
high schools are places to develop those language abilities.
Statistics revealed that 67 percent of limited-English-proficient
students live in five states: California, Texas, New York, Florida
and Illinois, with nearly 30 percent residing in California alone.
John Tulenko, producer of the Merrow Report and audience member,
expressed his concern about the effectiveness of the bilingual
programs and how it affects the time students spend in them. "Where
does the reputation that bilingual education has as a ‘dumping
ground’ of students come from?" he wondered. "Once in the program,
how long do they remain there?" "If a student has really strong
native language skills, it is very likely that he will, within a
year, develop enough English skills and be transitioned out (of the
program)," Hakuta said. Of course, there are some that may stay
longer, as most students take as long as five to seven years to
develop proficient, academic English skills, he added. Kris
Gutierrez, a professor at the School of Education, discussed the
biases people hold against bilingual education. "How we phrase the
discussion of bilingualism certainly influences educational policy
and how it’s implemented in schools," she said, The event, which
was the ninth of a 13-program series entitled ‘The Merrow Report on
Education’ and the third recorded at UCLA, will be aired on
National Public Radio in the fall.

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