It’s time to ditch bilingual ed

Today at RCP Tony Blankley writes about Newt, Bilingual Ed and the PC Police (emphasis added):

Likewise today, Spanish is a magnificent language proudly spoken by people around the world. But in the United States, while the language remains beautiful and noble, those Hispanic-American children who are discouraged from learning English (by a bilingual policy that retards rather than advances the learning of English) are and will continue to be culturally and economically ghettoized by their inability to read, write and speak English.

Not that Blankley or Grinwrich are saying anything new. Thousands of Hispanics have been saying the same thing.

(BTW, there are no “Hispanics” outside the USA; once we all leave the continental USA we are Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, Uruguayans, or whatever. “Hispanic” is a construct, and I’m using right now because it’s expedient.)

Among the thousands of Hispanics who decry bilingual education is Herman Badillo, who actually introduced and was instrumental passing in Congress the bilingual voting and bilingual education programs. In his book, One Nation, One Standard, Badillo again and again realizes that

(page 65) Reexamining bilingual education, the Board of Education released a study concluding that efforts to educate tens of thousands of students in their native languages were flawed. The study found that students – even recent immigrants – who took most of their classes in English generally fared better academically than did students in bilingual programs, where little English was spoken.

(page 67) Bilingual education requires an average of four to seven years before students master english, but immersion programs accelerate that to as little as one year. Immersion’s benefits are most dramatic for immigrant children in the early grades.

Last year I pointed out

Take a look at the professions where English prevails, not only in the USA, but across the world:

engineering
computers
other technology
natural sciences
medicine
financial institutions such as banks, stock markets, commodities markets, and trade in government-issued securities
accounting
economics
international law

A small amount of research will show you that those are the highest paid occupations in the world.
… While Harry Reid bellyaches about job outsourcing to China, he should take a look at the high-skilled jobs being outsourced: I guarantee you that the best Chinese engineers with world-class skills, like engineers all around the world, learned English.

Harry should also try getting hold of his friendly tech support hotline person. The odds are the person is in India. India’s become a preferred place for outsourcing jobs because India’s an English-speaking country. Again, English pays:

India’s IT and outsourcing sector is currently worth about $22bn and expected to grow by 25% until the end of the decade, it said.

India is actively courting more investors, and its economy will continue to grow in those areas.

Tony Blankley continues, and finds the real reason for the PC outrage:

It is not hateful of Newt to point that out. It is hateful of ideological “civil rights” activists to try to intimidate any politician who would dare to liberate kids from the linguistic ghetto that serves the political power of these “civil rights” activists. Once these kids have mastered English and fully entered American life, they will no longer be vote fodder for the “civil rights” activists’ political ambitions.

The special interest ethnic activists prefer to have a new generation of clients, rather than a new generation of fully integrated American citizens. And what they fear is an honest and open debate on the bilingual teaching method.

Teaching in the native language (bilingual ed) combined with ballot measures and government and consumer information in the native language is establishing a dubious result today — as millions of immigrants are given just enough such linguistic help to let them function minimally in America (without learning English), but not enough to participate fully in our great country, economy and culture

Poor people move to this country to benefit from our riches. Denying them the instruction they need in English is, as Roger said, condemning those same immigrants to a life of poverty and bad jobs.

Every child, every adult, in our country needs to be fully literate in English. I can’t say it enough.

Prior posts
Badillo speaks out on education
Krauthammer on assimilation
Acculturation is not simply being bilingual

technorati tags bilingual education, education