A new program is being instituted in the Bellevue, Washington, public schools which makes the entire federal Bilingual Education program all across the United States look downright silly. The “Bellevue Spanish Immersion Program” was approved by the School Board on February 15 and will start in classrooms in September.
Kindergarten and first grade pupils will have the opportunity to enroll in what the description for parents calls “an exciting new optional program” in which native English-speaking children will receive all their subject-matter instruction in Spanish.
The goals of this program are for pupils to develop the ability to speak, read and write Spanish like a native. The program will add one grade level each year so that those starting now can continue in this “immersion” program from year to year.
From the first day, kindergarten students will receive “all of their instruction and classroom communication” in Spanish, including language arts, mathematics, science, social studies and health, as well as reading. The teacher will speak only Spanish in almost all situations and encourage the pupils to do likewise by a system of rewards. “The goal is to accustom the students to the second language environment.”
The children in this “immersion” program will not receive any instruction in reading English until the second grade. Indeed, parents are admonished: “Do not attempt to formally teach your child to read in English.”
Reading English in the second grade starts only in the last semester and only at the rate of 30 minutes per day. Third graders will have 45 minutes per day of reading in English during the first semester and 60 minutes per day in the second semester. In grades four and five, English instruction continues to be limited to 60 minutes per day.
Parents are told that, after their children begin to read English in the second grade, they will be able to “transfer” many skills from Spanish and “catch up in English reading within one or two years.” That means catching up by the third or fourth grade.
The brochure describing this program for parents explains what it calls the “basic educational assumptions.” These are: (1) “Language learning should be started early” and the pupil must use the second language for “communicating in normal everyday situations and in subject content learning.”
(2) “Therefore, the total immersion program provides maximum opportunities to learn the second language. Studies have shown that students in partial immersion programs who spend half the day in English do not obtain the same fluency in the second language as total immersion students.”
(3) “The immersion program provides children with the opportunity to achieve functional proficiency in the second language by the time they complete the kindergarten through grade five sequence.”
The description bluntly says that parents are not expected to assist in homework activities which require any knowledge of Spanish. Indeed, the program is designed for children of families who do not speak Spanish.
The brochure promises parents who put their little children into this course that their child “will become bilingual” and will be able to communicate freely with persons who speak Spanish. However, “when your child gets home, do not be upset if he or she does not feel like telling all about the day at school.”
The brochure says that research proves that the immersion program is just as effective with average-IQ children as with high-IQ children. The below-average students understand the spoken language just as well as the above-average students.
Secretary William Bennett should get a copy of the “Bellevue Spanish Immersion Program,” remove the word “Spanish” wherever it appears, and insert the word “English.” Then he should distribute it to every school which has a Bilingual Education program teaching Hispanics in their native tongue instead of in English.
If the Spanish-speaking children are given an “English Immersion Program,” they will quickly learn to speak, read and write English. The Bellevue program promises that, when children are completely “immersed” in a second language, they will have functional proficiency by the fifth grade.
Presto, this “immersion” plan will solve the problem for Hispanic children. It will eliminate the vast Bilingual Education bureaucracy that perpetuates jobs for itself while preventing so many Spanish-speaking children from learning English.
