Dual Immersion
Bilingual Education Run Amok
By Daniel Muniz

Perhaps the zaniest bilingual education proposal is to create a classroom consisting of half English speaking students and the other half with non-English students (primarily Spanish) and teach the class in both languages. The purpose of this dual language immersion program would be to produce a classroom full of children who would ultimately be bilingual and literate in both languages. Consequently, the kids would help each other learn their respective languages and the end result would be both groups of children becoming proficient in English as well as in Spanish.

The good intentions of this idea are noble but the practicality of it is nutty at best.

The language of the United States of America is English. And regardless of how multicultural or politically correct you are, the inescapable harsh reality is that if someone cannot read and write in English and fluently speak it, they are condemned to a lifetime of severely limited employment opportunities. Not mastering the language of this country becomes an insurmountable obstacle in obtaining lifelong financial security and it also prevents people from being truly integrated in our society and from being a part of the American experience.
 

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One of the top priorities of our education system is create a workforce that is actually employable in the real world. And that means mastering the English language. Falling short of fulfilling that objective represents the complete and utter failure of our school system.

So in other words, learning anything else other than English is truly secondary. That doesn’t mean that other languages are unimportant but to live in this country everyone, especially employers in particular and society in general, must be able to understand you and communicate with you.

The best way to accomplish this goal is to completely immerse non-English speaking children into English. Such a program removes the crutch of the Spanish language and forces a child to solely concentrate on English.

And better yet, a child from a Spanish speaking household ought to begin his or her education experience only in English from kindergarten on up. This should not necessarily be an immersion program but just a regular class that can also offer extra help to any youngster who is struggling to keep up with their peers. I should know because Spanish was the language primarily spoken at my household and that is the language that I first learned at home but since I was placed in a normal classroom environment, I quickly mastered English.

Of course there are plenty of people who oppose such measures.

"English immersion is not as positive. It's saying you are broken, and we have to fix you. Teachers are not trained. I call them submersion programs."

Elena Izquierdo
Texas Association for Bilingual Education, president
Source: The Express News

If you do not know the English language, you indeed are broken. You have a serious handicap that places you outside of society and keeps you at a foreigner status. The problem with people like Izquierdo is that they see immersion programs as a humiliation to Hispanics. Well, America is a nation of immigrants. This country has had people who came from over a hundred different cultures and languages but they still assimilated and learned English. Of course it wasn’t easy but they did it to achieve financial security and to become a viable part of the formation of this country.

But more to the point, Hispanics are not exempt from being required to assimilate into America even though people like Izquierdo seem to think so. What proponents of bilingual education are doing is actually a tremendous disservice to Hispanics because limited employment opportunities are what is keeping too many of them impoverished.

The advocates of bilingual education also point to the data that demonstrates that kids who have mastered two languages academically outperform their peers. There is no dispute in that interpretation, however, kids who spend all twelve grades of schooling in bilingual programs rarely ever end up with a true proficiency of English. Nearly all of them leave high school with limited English capabilities which ironically is the same reason why so Hispanic organizations constantly file lawsuits against many state education agencies.

It is time to put an end to the silliness of bilingual education programs that have run amok for decades.

As a person who grew up in a predominantly Spanish-speaking household, I am truly grateful that my parents placed education and the English language as the highest priority for their children. As a result, my brother and my sister and I all have college degrees and professional careers. That could never have happened if we did not master English.

What makes America great is the tremendous opportunity that exists for anyone willing to exert the effort for it. And becoming fluent in English is simply one part of that process.

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