The Advantages Of Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education in the United States can be defined as “a program that seeks to permit non-English speaking children (many from lower-class homes) to use their вЂ?family language’ as the language of school” (Rodriguez 256). In other words, it is a method of education that suggests that a child whose native language is not English should learn English in institutions while being instructed in classes in his or her home language as well. This form of teaching has been a strong point of controversy in the United States for a very long time, and it is still debated today. On one side, there are brilliant scholars and educators who conclude that implementing a child’s home language in his or her school might ultimately be harmful to the child who learns under these conditions. On the other hand, various psychologists and pediatricians might suggest that instruction under a child’s native language is good and has certain qualities that provide children with a better understanding of the knowledge in the classroom. In this instance, the latter case is clearly supported by well grounded points; bilingual education is very efficient and should certainly be taught in schools in the United States. Throughout various human characteristics as well as in society, the evidence to support this viewpoint is pervasive.

Firstly, it is certain that any child living in the United States absolutely “should be reminded of his difference from others in mass society, of his вЂ?heritage’,” as the antagonists of Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria” would describe it (264). Not to perform such necessary obligations is to deny where a person came from, something that should be avoided at all costs. Of course, there are some opponents of these ideas who suggest that by adhering to one’s language and culture, the minority-language speaker resists assimilation and avoids learning the dominant language, ultimately leading to a negative attitude towards learning. However, several studies discussed later in this essay show that minority language-speakers can maintain their first language while learning English without problems. In addition, these individuals can add more diversity to the nation from their variety of cultures and backgrounds. Another reason that bilingual education should be taught in United States classrooms deals with the attitude a child has with respect to the different subjects taught in school. Haladyna, Shaughnessy, and Shaugnessy illustrate a very important concept in their essay “A Casual Analysis of Attitude towards Mathematics”: “a positive attitude towards mathematics (as well as any other subject) is valued for the following reasons . . . Attitude is often positively. . . related to achievement” (20). Mukherjee and Umar also discuss the effect attitude has on one’s academic progress: “it is reasonable to assume that the more positive is a pupil’s attitude towards learning a particular subject the more likely he is to succeed in that task” (518). These comments suggest that a positive attitude towards a school subject yields positive results, and they are very much correct. The most convenient way to instill a positive attitude in a child whose home language isn’t the mainstream one is to make his or her home language accessible in schools. Therefore, by instilling the home language, the student’s academic performance will greatly enhance. As a final, stark point to support the opinion at hand, statistics and surveys that were conducted relating to this issue inevitably provide clear proof that bilingual education is not harmful to this child in any way and should be used in institutions. These trends accurately depict positive results of bilingual education that have been proved by careful pragmatic research. According to Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt on these empirical findings done in 1976, “Although these were studies of bilingual programs in their first few years of implementation . . . the majority of the findings (58%) showed significantly positive effects of bilingual over monolingual education” (72). Albeit one might think that these results only applied to subjects not related to the nation’s primary language, English (such as Mathematics and the Sciences), he or she will be appalled to learn that these effective studies show that “in English . . . four out of the seven findings showed that children who learned to read in their native language did better than their counterparts taught in English only” (Burt 72). These findings, as well as many others related to the study of bilingual education, clearly demonstrate that the bilingual method of teaching is definitely worthwhile. People who are against the idea of bilingual education implemented in classrooms bring up other statistics and polls conducted that display results that run against the ones lionizing bilingual education. For example, Dulay and Burt mention that “AIR studies reported that students in Title VII funded programs performed at a lower level of English Language Arts . . . than students not in bilingual programs” (73). However, as the