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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DScottD who wrote (23131)	6/30/1998 6:27:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

DScottD, I agree that the ultimate result of education is to be a productive adult member of our society, and that includes speaking and writing English fluently. (I do think it is unreasonable to expect all older adult immigrants to become proficient in English.) What I am saying is that the way to accomplish that is with quality bilingual education in the early grades, including starting English immersion classes at four. Bilingual education should end two or three years after it starts, because in that time the child should become fluent. However, we have children coming into our society who do not speak any English, at every grade level. So some concentrated effort needs to be made to teach them English while they continue to learn basic skills like math, science and everything else students are required to master, in their native language. If you don't continue to teach those in the child's own language as he or she is mastering English, the child ends up years behind, feeling like a failure as well. Would you want your child to start kindergarten taught totally in Chinese? How long do you think it would take him to learn to read and do addition and subtraction? This is the same experience we ask these children to succeed at, if we totally drop bilingual education, and I think it is unfair.

To: DScottD who wrote (23131)	6/30/1998 6:47:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

So would the solution be not to have bi-lingualism as an open-ended proposition but perhaps a very intensive goal-oriented ESL approach with a time limit? As with welfare programs, or any government program it seems, there has been a tendency to ask for more and more until the recipients are controlling the program and demanding as entitlements what is really a wonderful benefit for which they should be grateful. Give them the opportunity and how they use it is their choice. I resent anyone stating that this has racist overtones or that I'm declaring English a "superior" language. It's the primary language of our country and it's to their benefit (and ours)they learn it, just as you said. Period. We have a tendency to apologize for what we've achieved, we bend over backward to avoid seeming proud of what we have accomplished. People have learned to press America's guilt buttons with great success.