The Benefits Of Bilingual Education

How would you feel if you attended school and your teacher lectured in a different language than your native language, English? Do you think you could be successful as a student under those conditions, or would you prefer to be taught in your native tongue? Did you know that in Chicago in the 19th Century, immigrant students had the opportunity to learn in their mother tongue? Instruction in German was common then because the earliest German schools had a religious focus, with the clergy providing instruction. By the late nineteenth century, new waves of Polish, Slavic, Greek and Italian immigrants settled in the major cities, such as Chicago. These immigrant groups also provided instruction in their native languages.

This prompted __xenophobia__
Experimentation continued, as teachers explored different approaches to teaching bilingual students. New teacher training programs and student assessments were available. But because bilingual education was implemented before an adequate infrastructure of teacher education programs, or material existed, program designers were confused about what bilingual education meant. Still, the bilingual education movement grew.

After 1987, the types of bilingual education programs that were funded expanded to include English instruction without a native-language component. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, some states restricted bilingual education programs with native-language instruction, and only provided English-language learners just some form of English instruction. In 2002, with the passing of the __No Child Left Behind Act__ ( which sought to close the gap in achievement between poor and minority students and their more advantaged peers) the __English Language Acquisition Act__ replaced the Bilingual Education
For example, in New York City, besides Spanish, there are a large number of students who at home speak Chinese, languages from the India, Russian, Yiddish, French Creole and Korean. Even though there are more languages than ever begin spoken in the United States, bilingual education in the United States has been reduced to standards in English-only, with a more watered down version of bilingual education.

!!!Lesson Summary

In this lesson, you learned how bilingual education began and what bilingual education is. You learned that immigrants in the 19th century had the opportunity to be taught in their native tongue. Because of xenophobia and the Americanization movement, instruction in English and the student's native language ceased.

You also learned that the 1968 Bilingual Education Act set the stage regarding equality of educational opportunity for language minorities. Even though the majority of bilingual education learners are Spanish-speaking today, there are bilingual students from other parts of the world. Unfortunately, bilingual education in the United States has been reduced to standards in