Bilingual Education

Okay, I'm going to try really, really hard to see both sides of this. Bear with me, as this may involve some slight bending of the rules of reality.

On the one hand, we have the English Only crowd. Basically, from what I understand, these folks seem to think that if people are not taught in Standard English and only Standard English, they'll continue to use their own native language as a crutch that will only inhibit their learning at higher levels, since higher level learning is generally less and less friendly to the bilingual education crowd. They presumably believe that there is no inherent value to a native language other than English in the United States, since English is the dominant language that we see everywhere. Only by assimilating to the English-speaking culture of the United States can children be assured of success. As far as that goes, it sounds vaguely logical. It does, however, gloss over some fairly big points. First off, most of American people are not Native Americans, so to designate English as the native language of English is a logical fallacy. That said, it is the dominant language...but it's not so dominant that other language groups don't make up a seriously substantial part of the population...and they vote. Next, the idea that these alternate language groups don't have anything to offer the English-speaking culture is also something along the lines of patently ridiculous. The fact that we have a whole major related to bilingual business practices tells me that bilingual education is something even stereotypical conservatives should be able to relate to. And if that's not enough, I'll end this little rant with the most powerful three-word argument of all time: Come on, seriously?

In the interest of fairness (and because I'm pretty sure the pro-bilingual crowd might be taking a bit too narrow a focus too), I'll take a look at the other side. The bilingual education crowd has this nice idea that non-native speakers of English should be taught English alongside their own native tongue, thereby empowering them to use their unique cultural perspective in an English-speaking setting to effect social change (count the buzzwords people, I just said something important). While this is well and good (great, actually), I notice that the article doesn't mention anything about native speakers of English using bilingual education to socially empower them. I mean...if the interest is social justice, then everyone should be equal, right? So...bilingual education should include, for example, non-native English speakers from Mexico learning English alongside Spanish in...say, L.A. These same schools hopefully (and probably do) involve native English speakers learning Spanish alongside English. If it helps minorities to be socially empowered by knowing two languages, I imagine it'd help them even more if the majority could speak several of those languages as well. That way, instead of this article sounding like it wants to use bilingualism as a weapon against the cultural elite, we'd have an education system that sounds more like a community of equal people getting along...which just sounds nicer, you know?