Secretary of Education William Bennett wants Congress and the American taxpayers to take a fresh look at “bilingual education.” Indeed, this fresh look is long overdue. In the last ten years, bilingual education has become just another Federal bureaucracy—a far cry from the helping hand to aliens that it was designed to be.
“Deregulation” of the airlines meant that millions more Americans were able to ride a plane for the first time. Deregulation of bilingual education would mean that millions more children would learn English instead of being kept forever in a foreign-language ghetto from which they will never be mainstreamed into American economic life.
These harsh words do not represent any attempt to rank English as “superior,” or to put down those whose native tongue is another language. If we are honest, we must face the reality that, if you want to live, work and succeed in America, you are hopelessly handicapped if you can’t speak and read the English language.
The public schools should ensure that every child enjoys access to the opportunities of American society, but those opportunities are effectively barred to children who cannot read and speak English.
Tens of millions of non-English-speaking immigrants have come to America seeking freedom or fortune or both. Many of those adults remained in ethnic neighborhoods, but they wanted their children to enjoy a rising standard of living in America.
So those parents saw to it that their children learned the language of their adopted country. The upper echelons of government, industry, and academia are filled with success stories of those children who were encouraged or compelled, by their parents and the public school system, to learn English.
Then came Big Brother Federal Government saying, “I’m here to help you.” Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act in 1968—Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
It started as a program to teach English to non-English-speaking children, but it became a program to ghettoize children with year after year of instruction in all subjects in their native tongue. One of the original sponsors of the law, Rep. James H. Scheuer (D-NY), said that the act’s “original purposes were perverted and politicized.”
Secretary Bennett now charges that, “after 17 years of Federal involvement, and after $1.7 billion in Federal funding, we have no evidence that the children have benefited.” He says that Federal policies toward bilingual education have become “confused as to purpose and overbearing as to means.”
What a farce! No wonder the Federal deficit is out of control! No wonder public schools have lost the confidence of the American taxpayers! Is there any other business where you could spend $1.7 billion without any evidence that it was accomplishing its purpose?
The Federal bilingual bureaucracy should be abandoned and those who have personally profited from the spending of all that money called to an account of their stewardship.
Secretary Bennett is more tolerant. He wants to continue the funding but give local school districts the autonomy and the flexibility to choose the methods they believe will best get the job done.
Bennett says it is foolish to believe that only Washington knows best, “especially in the absence of research establishing the superiority of instruction in a student’s native language. There is no evidence of such superiority.”
That sounds like common sense; but the bureaucrats don’t like it because they hate an environment of competition like the devil hates holy water. So, Bennett’s ideas were immediately denounced by the payrollers who are profiting by the present system.
The proven route to success for millions of immigrants—learning the English language as a child even though their parents do not speak English—is being denied today to non-English-speaking children by the Federal bureaucrats who have a vested interest in perpetuating the problem they were hired to solve. They have a powerful tax-funded lobbying apparatus working to maintain their jobs teaching elementary school subjects in foreign languages rather than expediting the children’s transition to English.
Bilingual education is “education pork barrel” which benefits only those who have jobs in the program. Those who suffer are the children who are kept in a cultural apartheid.
