Why Is Bilingual Education Controversial?
For many Americans, bilingual education seems to defy common sense – not to mention the Melting Pot tradition. They ask: • If non-English-speaking students are isolated in foreign-language classrooms, how are they ever going to learn English, the key to upward mobility? • What was wrong with the old “sink or swim” method that worked for generations of earlier immigrants? • Isn’t bilingual education just another example of “political correctness” run amok – the inability to say no to a vociferous ethnic lobby? Some English Only advocates go further, arguing that even if bilingual education is effective – which they doubt – it’s still a bad idea for the country because bilingualism threatens to sap our sense of national identity and divide us along ethnic lines. They fear that any government recognition of minority languages “sends the wrong message” to immigrants, encouraging them to believe they can live in the U.S.A. without learning English or conforming to “American” ways. Such comp
