LOS ANGELES, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is being issued by
Reason magazine:
More and more Latino parents are getting fed up with bilingual education
programs because their kids aren't learning the English skills necessary to
succeed, according to an article by award-winning author Glenn Garvin in the
January issue of Reason magazine.
( http://www.reason.com/9801/january.html )
"Bilingual education was born 30 years ago from a good-hearted but vague
impulse by Congress to help Spanish speakers learn English," writes Garvin.
"Instead, it has become a multi-billion-dollar hog trough that feeds arrogant
education bureaucrats and militant Hispanic separatists. And now poor
immigrant parents increasingly see it as the wall around a linguistic ghetto
from which their children must escape if they want to be anything more than
maids or dishwashers."
"Administrators ruthlessly and routinely shanghai English-speaking kids
into bilingual programs," says Garvin. English-speaking students are often
placed in bilingual education strictly because they have a Hispanic name or
because they are misclassified by seriously flawed standardized tests. And
study after study shows that kids learn more when immersed in English speaking
classes, according to the article.
Why do these programs persist despite the growing evidence of failure?
"Hispanic politicians and activists, wildly out of touch with their own
communities, continue to wave the bloody bilingual flag," Garvin writes.
Also, there are considerable financial incentives within the education
establishment to keep bilingual education on life support. In California
alone, bilingual certification can mean an extra $5,000 a year for a teacher.
The article examines the real-life experiences of families harmed by
failed bilingual programs, and points to evidence of the growing rebellion,
including:
* Parents at a Los Angeles school held about 90 kids out of class for two
weeks to force the school to start teaching English.
* One hundred and fifty Hispanic families in Brooklyn sued the state of
New York to force the release of their children from a bilingual program.
* In Princeton, New Jersey, immigrant parents were so outraged about rules
that made it difficult to get their children out of bilingual programs that
the state legislature stepped in to change them.
Also, a November 1997 poll conducted by the Field Institute showed that 66
percent of Latino voters in California favor a ballot measure to limit
bilingual education. Last week, the "English for the Children" initiative
qualified for California's statewide ballot next June.
SOURCE Reason Magazine
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Related links:
http://www.reason.com/9801/january.html
CONTACT:
Mike Alissi of Reason Magazine, 203-407-0114
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