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bilingual education has sparked as much controversy as any other education issue. Most educators and parents agree that the main goals in educating students with a native language other than English are mastery of English and of content in academic areas. But a heated academic and political battle rages over how best to reach those goals and how important it is to preserve the students' original language in the process.
Teachers use several methods to instruct students whose English is limited -- including immersion, transitional bilingual education, and developmental, or maintenance, bilingual education.
In immersion, students learn in English. Teachers generally use simple language that is tailored to let students absorb English while learning academic subjects.
Transitional bilingual education offers students some instruction in their native language while simultaneously providing concentrated English-language instruction. At least in theory, students make a transition from transitional bilingual programs to mainstream English programs within a few years.
Developmental bilingual education attempts to build on students' skills in their native language as they learn English as a second language.
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THE ROOTS OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Special services for limited-English-speaking students were few and limited until the1970s. At that point, language-minority speakers and their advocates were arguing for bilingual education as a civil right. They argued that students were being deprived of an education if they were taught in a language they didn't understand.
The push for bilingual education blossomed as a fight for students' overall rights. Bilingual programs were seen as fostering respect for the non-native English-speaking students' culture. As one of the organizations backing bilingual education, for example, the New York State Association for Bilingual Education maintains it is important to foster "the awareness and appreciation of biculturalism and bilingualism as an integral part of cultural pluralism in our society."
In1968 Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act to provide for the growing number of linguistically diverse students who, because of their limited English proficiency, were not getting an education equal to that of their English-proficient peers. The Bilingual Education Act revisions of1974 recast provisions of the1968 legislation. The1974 law created the National Advisory Council on Bilingual Education to articulate a plan for a national policy in bilingual education.
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Bilingual education is a form of education in which information is presented to the students in two (or more) languages. Technically, any educational system that utilizes more than one language is bilingual. This means that many, if not most, school programs are bilingual, in at least a literal sense of the word.
Bilingual education has been practiced in many forms, in many countries, for thousands of years. Defined broadly, it can mean any use of two languages in school – by teachers or students or both – for a variety of social and pedagogical purposes.
