Bilingual Education

The term bilingual education refers to education conducted through two languages; thus, it is not simply the teaching of a second language. Although [Page 97]often presented as a pedagogical strategy, it has policy implications that have frequently mobilized both supporters and opponents from the general public.

In common usage, bilingual education has come to refer to, in most cases, what more accurately would be called transitional bilingual education (TBE). The official purpose of TBE programs is essentially remedial: to provide home-language support for pupils whose first language is not English so that they can continue to study academic subjects while acquiring proficiency in English. It should be distinguished from two-way bilingual programs that bring together pupils whose home languages differ, for instruction in which both languages are used so that students can learn, in part, from each other.

A variety of rationales have been advanced for TBE. One is that study of other subjects should not be on hold until pupils have become sufficiently proficient in English. Another is based on linguistic theory that literacy and other academic skills should be acquired first in the home language and will then transfer more efficiently to a second language than if instruction had been in the latter from the start. Yet another is that the self-concept of members of an ethnic minority group depends upon academic validation of the language associated with that group, even if the individual has not learned it at home.

TBE has been required by some states and implemented by many school districts as a means of meeting their obligation to pupils with limited English proficiency. The U.S. Supreme Court found in Lau v. Nichols (414 U.S. 563) in 1974 that

After the Lau decision, school administrators had good reason to believe that they were not only permitted but also required to educate language-minority pupils separately, at least for whatever period of time was required to bring them up to speed in English. The argument, by some linguists and minority-language advocates, that the best way to learn English was through a number of years of a bilingual program provided a strong rationale for extending this period of separation.

According to some observers, the tendency of ethnic group leaders to call for separate programs is compounded by the fact that separate programs, in education as in other human services, provide a major source of professional employment for educated and fully bilingual members of the group. A study in the 1970s noted the creation in New York City of a network of Puerto Rican educators whose careers depended on federally funded bilingual programs.

...