Since a quarter of California's school children do not speak English, what would happen to
them if we don't teach it to them?
Whoops!!!! Sorry---but where did this come from!!!! How did you make a leap to not teaching them? I thought HOW we teach them was the question. And the more I searched, because I don't know a great deal about the topic, the more I saw that there is no clear cut answer to this. You seemed to be saying that bilingual education is the only way to go--- that to force children to learn in English is tantamount to discrimination, dooming them to failure, but not everyone agrees with you. As a matter of fact, several very renowned educators and many studies argue that educating in a native language class is detrimental to the learning of English and slows the successful transition to the English language and that the ESL (with total immersion)is a better approach.
I think (and I don't know this for a fact) that ESL is used here in Dallas. I have a couple of friends certified in it. There are studies showing that total immersion is much more successful than the bilingual approach. For instance, Gloria Matta Tuchman, who officially co-sponsored the English for the Children initiative with Ron Unz in Ca. has spent 20 years using immersion English to teach Latino immigrant kids. Although education bureaucrats openly disdain Tuchman's incredibly successful curriculum, it is impressive indeed. Every school year Tuchman produces yet another crop of first-graders who are fully literate readers and writers of English.
Tuchman's results are a stunning achievement in California, where bilingual teachers---who heavily emphasize Spanish over English---have a success rate of just 6 percent in moving immigrant children from Spanish to English each school year. Tuchman, by contrast, graduates 99 percent of her kids from Spanish to English each year." (my emphasis)
So where your opinion may be that NOT teaching in a native language is discriminatory, many people, including immigrant parents themselves believe the opposite and request that their child NOT be placed in a native language class but in a total immersion English group.
A Wall Street Journal article states:
When asked why, if ESL is so successful with adults, it isn't used with children, most ESL teachers simply repeat the dogma of bilingual education. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, says that bilingual students who first master Spanish, then make a transition to English, do at least as well academically in the long run as most of their English-only counterparts. Yet there is no research suggesting this conclusion.
What research does indicate is that too many Latino students end up not speaking either Spanish or English well. Scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills show that California fourth-graders who move to English-only classes from Spanish instruction are hopelessly unable to perform well in English. The state's Latino students have consistently scored the lowest of any ethnic group on the Scholastic Assessment Test, and have the highest dropout rate, 40%.
Figures from California's Department of Education show that while the number of the state's public school students in bilingual programs (or certified eligible for those programs) more than doubled from 1981 to 1993, the percentage of these making it into English-only classes dropped by more than half.
Why do California's bilingual educators persist? Perhaps the most powerful reason is money. Bilingual education is a $500 million-a-year industry in California alone. The size of budgets designated for bilingual education depends on how many students are enrolled in the program, giving educators at all levels a big incentive to sign up ever more students for bilingual programs.
I don't know the answer, but I think to arbitrarily decide that there is only one way to accomplish the goal and that other approaches are wrong, is to limit our possibilities.
By the way, you are absolutely correct about many Asians coming from educated professional backgrounds, but that was actually my point ---that attitudes and emphasis at home may be more influential on success than the actual programs employed. Incidentally, California may provide bilingual ed. for Asians but the ratio of student to teacher is much, much higher than that found in the Hispanic classes (662:1 v. 81:1). Came across that somewhere and it surprised me.
I don't know the answer to the catheter question either because I agree with you that if the child is mentally capable of being there, he should be. Ideally, I suppose there should be a school nurse always available to take care of special needs, and let the teachers do their job.
MEDICAID IS GOING TO PAY FOR VIAGRA???? I'm dumbfounded. |
