U.S. Bilingual Education Viewed from Abroad

Essay

Editor's Note: The authors of this entry were invited to submit an article reflecting a mix of information and expert opinion. We acknowledge that parts of it could be disputed or given an alternative interpretation. In several instances, we found this approach helpful in more realistically portraying the history and current status of bilingual education in the United States.

When children arrive at school with a language other than the school language, immigrant or indigenous, education systems throughout the world respond by ignoring or subjugating that language, allowing a transitional phase from the home to the school language, or using both languages in school for a prescribed period. The United States, like most countries of the world, provides education for immigrant and indigenous bilingual children. It has also experimented with schools that turn monolingual English language children into bilinguals, but to a much lesser extent than does its neighbor, Canada.

Whereas bilingual education is nearly universal, North America generally has the most precisely defined methods and approaches, models, and systems of bilingual education. Canada has internationally exported the French-language immersion model, but from the United States, models such as mainstreaming (submersion), transitional bilingual education, and dual-language education (two-way immersion) have been publicized internationally. However, the United States has since the late 1990s received worldwide attention for its politicization of bilingual education and for moving to an increasingly subtractive, assimi-lationist form of education for immigrant children. In short, more than other societies, the United States has tended to view bilingualism and multilingualism as liabilities rather than as assets. What makes the United States internationally distinct in the early 21st century is its fierce political debates about bilingual education, and the official discouragement of the prolonged study of languages in schools, in a shrinking world that needs bilingual education more than ever.

In this entry, particular dimensions of bilingual education reveal the positioning of the United States within international conversations concerning this subject. These dimensions are neither independent nor comprehensive, but illustrate where the United States has separately influenced, provoked, and become estranged from international movements in bilingual education.