Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education History in the United States

Because of the United States' rich multiethnic history, bilingual education and restrictions against its use have been a part of U.S. history since the country's inception. Further, distinct populations have had differential access to BE at different historical moments. Indigenous peoples faced federal language eradication policies, largely through English-only boarding schools that separated youth from elders and severely punished children for speaking indigenous languages. In contrast, during the mid-to late 1800s, European immigrants were able to implement native-language instruction in public and parochial schools at a time when local control was prevalent in nonindigenous communities. In addition to language education maintained by immigrants, autonomous language communities continued to exist, in both the colonial and expansionist eras, incorporating a range of language communities, including French-speaking communities in the Northeast, German-speaking communities in Pennsylvania, and Spanish-speaking communities in the Southwest that had existed before becoming part of the United States.

At the turn of the 20th century, learning English took a more central role within an ever-expanding public school system, largely in response to the rise of mass immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the corresponding waves of anti-immigrant sentiment directed toward non-Anglo and non-Nordic newcomers. English education formed a critical part of a school system charged [Page 213]with “Americanizing” immigrant-origin youth. The trend toward monolingual English education was later exacerbated by the United States' involvement in World Wars I and II, which placed additional restrictive pressures on non-English language programs that were increasingly viewed by the English-speaking society as unpatriotic and “un-American.” However, with the end of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War, an interest in foreign language learning resurfaced, especially for business development and military uses. Folk bilingualism—the development and maintenance of bilingual communities—was not encouraged.

The rise of contemporary forms of BE in the United States began with domestic and international political shifts in the 1960s. In 1963, a bilingual program was established at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami to assist Cuban refugees. Meanwhile, domestic civil rights struggles were becoming more prominent. By the late 1960s, Mexican American and American Indian groups began demanding schools in which their languages and cultures were used for teaching and learning. The civil rights movement, the War on Poverty, and the success of the Coral Way School created conditions that favored the passage of the Bilingual Education Act (1968), which provided funding to serve children who were not fluent English speakers. Subsequently, the Lau v. Nichols (1974) U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that schools were required to have language accommodations for students who entered school with “limited English proficiency,” and to ensure that students had equal access to instruction. The Lau decision did not mandate bilingual education but, rather, left the decision up to local school districts to determine the type of “accommodation” they would provide; however, the Lau Remedies (1975), a set of recommendations developed by the U.S. Department of Education, strongly encouraged BE where feasible in order to overcome barriers to learning for ELL students.

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