Bilingulism In Education

Bilingulism in Education

The first source of information that I came across is a webpage entitled," Bilingual Education". This website touches upon many aspects of Bilingual education with-in America. This site presents opposing and supporting views on this form of education. One main view is that "[f]or many Americans, bilingual education seems to defy common sense - not to mention the Melting Pot tradition". (Crawford, 1998) Another great excerpt from this website is that

"Some English Only advocates go further, arguing that even if bilingual education is effective - which they doubt - it's still a bad idea for the country because bilingualism threatens to sap our sense of national identity and divide us along ethnic lines. They fear that any government recognition of minority languages "sends the wrong message" to immigrants, encouraging them to believe they can live in the U.S.A. without learning English or conforming to "American" ways. (Crawford, 1998)

Another interesting article that I found was about Ebonics being treated as a real language, and also becoming apart of bilingual education. The history of how the term "Ebonics" was coined "in St. Louis in 1973 by George Washington University psychologist Robert L. Williams, who combined the words "ebony" and "phonics." (Gilyard, Stix, 1997) This article gives percentages of Black minorities as compared to Latino's and the article says that it would make more sense to institute Ebonics, by means of emersion.

Bilingualism in Politics

The next article I choose to summarize is about a prime example of a high-school student having to be suspended (for saying "No Problemo" (Reid, 2005)) for only speaking a second language with-in the hallways of his school. It even goes on further to say that