Bilingual Education and Its Discontents

America has a long history of bilingual education and language education in general. Alas, we're the worst language learners in the world. There are good reasons for that, primary being the very large size of our mostly monolingual country. You can go anywhere, coast to coast, and if you speak English you're good 99% of the time.

Of course Spanish has defied the odds and held on in a major way. 20% of Americans speak Spanish. It's the second language I chose, and it's the one I'd generally recommend for an American kid. After all, you can go out and use it in lots of places with little effort. I was in a Peruvian restaurant last night and used Spanish. The servers recognized my accent and answered in English, but at least I tried.

We've had failures in teaching language. I know, because I was one of them. I was identified as having language ability in elementary school and selected to take Spanish early, in 7th grade. Imagine that--we know well that the younger you are, the better your language ability is, and my district thought 7th grade was early. I was placed in something called a language lab, where we used an audio-lingual approach and listened to tapes. We memorized dialogues like parrots and learned a song about the Puerto Rican flag. It was largely a waste of time, and I spent three years learning very little. (When I was older I spent time in Mexico and learned a little more.)

Then there's bilingual education. Bi suggests two, but I've been working in city schools since 1984, and I've noted many, many programs that taught in L1 only. In fact, my niece arrived from Colombia and was placed in a "bilingual" class. She was six years old. I would bring her to a playground in Jackson Heights and watch her struggle to communicate with English-speaking children. I asked her if they were teaching her English in school and she said no.

I went to her school with her mom, and was met by a very formidable school secretary. The secretary told me that it was better for her to stay in that class. She had a lot of experience, she said, and knew about these things. I told her, with all due respect, that I was not all that interested in her opinion. She said this was they way they'd always done it. I told her I was with the girl's mother, and that she had a legal obligation to respect her wishes. At that, the principal walked out of her office and accommodated our request.

My 6-year-old niece was moved into an ESL class, where she was with English learners who spoke multiple languages. The new class was conducted entirely in English and she acquired it quickly. She's now in her 20s and speaks perfect English. She'd have gotten there anyway, but placing her in a class where English was used made that happen a little more quickly. I don't oppose bilingual education, but that wasn't what my niece was getting.

Now there's something called dual-language education. I know a little bit about that. It's actually what bilingual education was supposed to be. You take half speakers of a foreign language, half of English, mix them all together and teach them 50/50. The desired effect is a win-win, in which all students acquire both languages.

We adopted our daughter from Colombia and watched her reject Spanish as she acquired English from Elmo and the Teletubbies. Though I spoke to her in English and my wife spoke Spanish, we made the egregious error of accepting English responses all the time. (I should have known better.) Thus, though my daughter had great passive understanding of Spanish, she spoke only English. In Freeport, where we live, there's a very good dual language program. We got her in for first grade and she recovered a whole lot of Spanish. It's a great thing to do if you have the population to support it.

Now it looks like certain areas have an issue, to wit, that the foreign speakers are moving out, leaving a bunch of monolingual white people to maintain dual language programs. I guess when rents go up and newcomers can't afford to stay, that's one side effect. Personally, I get the feeling that Trump and the GOP would like all of us to move out, maybe onto fishing boats, while only hedge fund managers, CEOs, and US Senators remain on the mainland.

Actually, our newcomers are a great resource. It's too bad that troglodytes like Trump and his followers see them as a threat. We can work with them and make this a win-win. Alternatively, we can leave our heads firmly parked in the sand and salute the flag while Trumpies screw us left and right. For people with open minds, real bilingual education works two ways and benefits all. As for Trump and his fellow autocrats, France used the guillotine to turn them around. This notwithstanding, even though Trump demanded the death penalty for innocent Americans, I don't believe in capital punishment.

I hope we can dump him and his ilk ASAP. Then we can embrace the diversity of our potentially great nation rather than deluding ourselves that we're somehow gonna turn it into a 1950s style black and white Donna Reed Show that's all white and no black.

To Bi or Not to Bi

I'm not an expert on bilingual education, but I often wonder how much English gets used in bilingual classes. I've started thinking about this a lot since, the other day, a mother accompanied her daughter to my classroom door. Mom was upset. Her daughter had been placed in a bilingual program, so why the hell was she in an English class. My patient student translator, who I dragged out of his seat especially for this occasion, calmly explained that everyone had to learn English.

Mom was not happy, but as we did not present her with an alternative, she left

My kids are often shocked I won't let them speak their first languages in ESL classes. They don't see it as a thing, and as they spend much of their day speaking their L1, or first language, they’re shocked by my unreasonable demands. But the only way I know to teach English is in English. I remember well high school teachers teaching me Spanish almost exclusively in English. I learned very little until I spent a few summers in Mexico, where English was simply not an option.

I enforce a policy that we will respect one another, and I see using a language we all share as a facet of that. I can speak Spanish, but I don't do it in my classes. Personally, I think that would be favoring the Spanish speakers, and more or less actively discriminating against everyone else. Unless I'm prepared to speak every language in the room, which I simply cannot do, I think I need to stick to English.

I know some other teachers have different approaches. I do understand the need to help out kids in their own languages sometimes. I will drag Spanish speakers in the hall and speak to them. I will take a more advanced student out with a rank beginner, as I did with the girl and her mom, and have the kid help me. But even that is a little unfair. For example, I have one girl who speaks Arabic. She came several weeks ago and I haven't got another student to translate for her.

For her, I'm lucky that someone else in the building shares her language and will help her out. But even that's not a given.

I studied dual language programs in college, and enrolled my daughter in one when she was in first grade. It was great for her. I had spoken English to her and my wife Spanish, but we failed to make her respond to my wife in Spanish. My daughter went to Colombia one summer with my wife and was shocked when she answered people in English and they didn’t understand. It worked with Mom. For goodness sake, Elmo and the Teletubbies spoke English. What kind of place was this South America anyway? After  her first grade class, she started speaking Spanish again. I was driving with her mom and her abuela and I almost crashed the car when I heard her do so.

I also remember my niece from Colombia, at the age of 6, was in a first grade class that used no English whatsoever. I watched her struggle to spit out English in the playground and took her and her mom to the school, where I had to fight a secretary to get an audience with the principal. We got her placed in an ESL program and she made rapid progress with kids from all over the world rather than only those who spoke Spanish. 

I like the idea of bilingual education if it's done right. And actually the notion of half L1 dominant and half L2 dominant kids supporting one another, like the program my daughter attended in elementary school, appeals to me a lot. It seems to me a win-win, and I have no idea why it isn't utilized more often. Our newcomers have a lot to offer us, and that certainly includes their languages.

If you've got a school full of Spanish or Chinese kids who need to learn English, why not group them with English kids who want to learn Spanish or Chinese?

Lost in Translation Part 2

No one's a bigger fan of Mike Winerip than I am, but I think there's something missing from his recent column in the NY Times about Somali immigrants. He suggests that they're being denied translation services, and are therefore unable to learn English.

Actually, regardless of which classes they may or may not be taking, it's remarkable for kids to spend two years in the US without acquiring a significant amount of English. Also, while I do not oppose bilingual education, it is not absolutely necessary. Immersion ought to work for anyone. There's something really wrong here.

It could certainly be the inability of some of these kids to read that hinders them in many areas, but they still ought to pick up verbal English.

Winerip says their "English immersion" teachers explain in English and clarify in Spanish, for the benefit of the majority. If you're not an educator, you may be unfamiliar with specific pedagogical jargon, but we in the business refer to individuals who engage in such practices as "bad" or sometimes, the more colorful "clueless and incompetent" teachers.

If these kids were in my beginning ESL classes, I would force them to speak English, whether they liked it or not, by any and all means necessary. For me, that's fairly standard practice.

Those of us who sat through years of language classes, receiving passing grades, but learning little or nothing know this--translation is not, primarily, how kids acquire language.

Participation is.

Bilingual Education

Few question the value of being bilingual. Even fewer know that in New York City, bilingual education is optional, and can be opted out of by parental request.

NY Times columnist John Tierney wrote a column a few years ago about a Bronx neighborhood in which, he said, kids had to attend Catholic school in order to be educated in English. This is simply incorrect.

When my 6 year old niece arrived here from Colombia, she was placed in a “bilingual” class in a Jackson Heights elementary school. From what I could gather, it was taught entirely in Spanish. She was learning English on the playground, though—I watched her struggle through the words she needed to get others to play with her. It’s particularly absurd to place young, capable language learners in an English-deprived environment. If they don’t acquire English in school and they don’t hear it at home, where on earth are they supposed to learn it?

I went to the school and asked that she be placed in a class where only English would be spoken. A strong-minded secretary took great pains to dissuade me, telling me the story of her life, the error of my ways, the wisdom of the ages, and whatever else she could think of until I raised my voice and out came the principal. We had her transferred into an ESL class, where she’d be with other newcomers but only English would be spoken. A few months later, she was fluent in English.

Bilingual education is a great idea that’s been degraded through the years. It was originally conceived as a 50-50 proposition, using half L1 and half target language. In practice, it’s sometimes taught by people who almost never use English. That’s a shame. There’s a great book called Mirror of Language by Kenji Hakuta that describes Canadian programs where groups of English and French speakers managed to acquire each other’s languages.

In Nassau, where I live, having been priced out of my school’s district many years ago, a few districts offer dual language programs. They’re so named, I suspect, to differentiate them from failed bilingual programs. My daughter has been attending one since first grade. Her class of 18 primarily English speakers is adjacent to a class of 18 primarily Spanish speakers. For part of each day, they switch teachers and must use either English or Spanish as a second language. Now entering fourth grade, the kids are pretty much bilingual.

That’s a lot more painless than conjugating verbs in tenth grade, and a lot more effective as well. Language acquisition abilities begin to decline and deteriorate rapidly around puberty, yet most districts wait till then to offer foreign language.

After reading Mr. Tierney’s column, I emailed him, telling him the Bronx parents had rights. Mr. Tierney, a strong voucher proponent, chose not to share that information with them. Last year, NY Times education columnist Sam Freedman wrote a similar piece, adding that Chancellor Klein strove in vain to help parents enroll their kids in English-speaking classes.

It's disturbing that columnists at the NY Times go public with unexamined information. And it’s remarkable that the NYC Chancellor has not yet been made aware that bilingual education is strictly optional. So you may have heard it here first—if you know kids in bilingual classes that are doing them no good, have their parents opt them out. They have every right to do so.