March
22, 2002
Examining
the Issue of Bilingual Education
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Margaret Scott Illustration
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In 1998 California
replaced bilingual education programs in its public schools with
English-teaching programs. Arizona did the same in 2000. Should
Massachusetts follow suit in 2002? Before answering this difficult
question, which will be posed as the "English for the Children"
initiative at the ballot box in November, Mount Holyoke community
members have the opportunity to consider both sides of the issue
on Wednesday, March 27, at 11 am in Mary Woolley's New York
Room.
"The Great Debate:
What Should Be the Future of Bilingual Education in Massachusetts?"
will feature bilingual education opponent Rosalie Pedalino Porter,
who helped draft the initiative, and bilingual education proponent
Catherine Snow, whose op-ed pieces on this hotly contested issue
appeared in the March 13 issue of the Boston Globe.
"The future of
bilingual education is a critical issue for public school education
across the country," said John Fox, visiting lecturer of
complex organizations and coordinator of the MHC event. "There
is an enormous amount of emotional and intellectual energy on
both sides of the issue, increasingly so because of the successful
initiatives in California and Arizona." Fox will moderate
the debate, inviting fifteen-minute presentations from each speaker,
brief rebuttals, and questions from the audience.
A lawyer by training,
Fox's teaching method is to have students understand and
articulate arguments on both sides of each issue they study. "The
most persuasive person is the one able to articulate their opponent's
argument even better than their opponent," said Fox.
In anticipation of
the debate, Fox's students will read opposing opinions on
bilingual education in the context of his course Poverty in the
United States, which considers why so many people are poor in
this, the wealthiest of all nations, and what can be done to mitigate
the level of poverty. At Holyoke Health Center, the students are
getting a firsthand look at how poverty affects health. They are
doing learning-service projects there on topics such as the relationship
between poor housing and poor health for Holyoke's children,
many of whom are poor.
Rosalie Pedalino Porter
is a former Spanish bilingual teacher and program director in
Newton, Massachusetts, and author, researcher, and consultant
to United States school districts. She favors replacing the state's
current bilingual education law—which she says imposes "a
harmful, one-size-fits-all requirement" that leaves many
children unable to read or write in English—with English
immersion programs that adapt to the varied needs of immigrants,
migrants, and refugees. "All that we advocates of change
want is for districts to have a choice of programs and not be
tied to the bilingual teaching that is demonstrating poor results
here and across the country," wrote Porter in her Globe
editorial. By replacing the current law on bilingual education,
she says, we will "give limited-English students a greater
opportunity to benefit from schooling and achieve their highest
ambitions."
Catherine Snow, Henry
Lee Shattuck Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
takes a different stand. Bilingual education is not failing Massachusetts
children, says Snow, noting that children with limited proficiency
in English are reclassified as fluent in English within three
to four years in bilingual programs. She says that under current
law, school districts have freedom to design the best programs
for their students, including structured immersion to English
as a Second Language, Snow also fears that an end to bilingual
education law will mean an end to federal funding for schools'
neediest students. She writes, "If an antibilingual education
proposition passes, Massachusetts parents would lose the option
of choosing the best program for their children, and their children
would lose even more."
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