Bilingual Education Programs

The research of Jim Cummins, a bilingual-education theorist and a professor of education at the University of Toronto, provides the scientific perspective underlying bilingual education programs. According to Cummins, a strong command of the native language is a solid foundation for the acquisition of a second language (Porter, 1998, p. 28).

This premise has been realized for individuals like Roberto Feliz, a Boston-area anesthesiologist, who had benefited from bilingual education. During a 1993 congressional hearing, he recounted how bilingual education enabled him to reviv

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According to these critics, the premise of bilingual education classes is a divisive concept that slows down the assimilation process of these immigrant children. By keeping children straddled between two worlds, bilingual education advocates are sabotaging the immigrant children's chances of learning a sufficient level of English to allow them to survive in the workplace (Rothstein, 1998, p. 672). Immigrant children who are immersed in their native language at school and at home will not feel the incentive to tackle the difficult challenge of learning another language (Rothstein, 1998, p. 679). Certainly, the application of the practices of bilingual education programs has led to the creation of a segregated classroom. Teachers are more interested in teaching the native language and preserving native culture than with teaching English in the officially designated time of three years (Porter, 1998, p. 28). Students such as Janey Shek from Hong Kong transferred out of a New York City bilingual education program after one year. She felt that there was no opportunity to speak English because only Chinese was used everyday (Monagle & Hardy, 1991, p. 14). Several national surveys conducted on parents with limited-English school ch
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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