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Antagonism to Bilingual Education Programs

Americans have recently shown an antagonism to bilingual education programs, which with the recent vote in California on Proposition 227 has resulted in the beginning of the abandonment of bilingual programs. The vote represents a common way of dealing with problems not by fixing them but by throwing out the whole program without having a real alternative. "English Only" curricula are being introduced. One problem is that simple immersion has been tried before and did not produce the desired results. If bilingual education has not been working, it may need to be reshaped rather than eliminated. For that matter, if "English Only" is to be instituted, the curriculum itself needs to be tested to show that it works. Simply adopting an "English Only" policy will not solve the problems of our educational system and will not make Hispanics in particular learn as they need to learn.

The public perception concerning bilingual education is bound with two related but different issues, one concerning illegal immigration, and the other concerning welfare. The public has expressed dissatisfaction with these policies as well and has demanded reform. Many of those who require bilingual education programs are indeed immigrants--not necessarily illegal immigrants, though many fail to make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration when raising concerns about how tax dollars are spent. Similarly, there is a perception that many of the immigrant children are also beneficiaries of welfare, though this also is not necessarily the case. Thus, anger about these other issues has been directed at the schools, and children are being made scapegoats by many critics of immigration policy and welfare.

In 1968, the bilingual Education Act was passed and stated in part,

In recognition of the special educational needs of the large numbers of students in the United States whose mother tongue is Spanish and to whom English is a foreign l...

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Antagonism to Bilingual Education Programs. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:07, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691162.html