This paper examines the arguments for bilingual versus monolingual education in American schools in light of Thomas Sowell's argument in A Conflict of Visions that all perspectives of the world are derived from either a constrained or an unconstrained view of human beings. Sowell contends that those who think about the way things are or ought to be approach their thinking from a point of either believing that people operate from limited potential and selfish interests or base their actions on an innate desire to improve the world, even at personal expense. Applied to the question of whether students whose first language is not English should be taught in an environment that mixes their native language with instruction in English or should instead be taught only in English, Sowell's dichotomy suggests very different answers based on very different assumptions. This paper considers how constrained and unconstrained visions affect the approach used.
The United States has always been a melting pot of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. Until the early 1960s, however, public education dealt with the problem by essentially ignoring it. Children enrolled in public schools were given no special instruction in their native language; they were expected to learn English by immersion in the language in everyday use in the classroom. The first significant program to attempt bilingual instruction was initiated in 1963 in Dade County, Florida, to teach Cuban refugees. The 1968 Bilingual Education Act soon followed, paving the way for dual instruction. A 1996 (June) report estimates that almost three and a half million students in the United States do not speak English as their first language; this includes Native Americans born here, as well as a constant flow of immigrants from all over the world (McLaughlin, p. 6). In order to help these children to become fully-functioning members of society, the public schools have an obligation t...