What is bilingualism worth?
By Rebecca Freeman and Else Hamayan The fact that we are asked what bilingualism is worth and how much we should invest in it is an indication that we are far from being a society that values proficiency in two (or more) languages. Yet in this day and age we should be very concerned that, despite the fact that many students in U.S. schools speak a language other than English at home, few of these students graduate from high school with proficiency in that language. Since the early 1900s, immigrants have experienced strong pressure to assimilate to monolingualism in English. Even among the Spanish-speaking population today, we see clear evidence of an ongoing language shift toward English, despite the large numbers of immigrants that revitalize this language throughout the country. For the majority of immigrants, today as in the past, the native language is generally lost after three generations (Peyton, Ranard, & McGinnis, 2001). The cost to the individual of losing a native language i
