In Print: Volume 86: Number 5
Bilingual Education: Lessons From Abroad for America’s Pending Crisis
By Travis England
86 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1211 (2009)
(PDF)
Bilingual education has been the cause of much debate in the United States over the last several decades. As the country continues to see a proportional increase in its minority populations, especially those that have recently emigrated from non-English speaking nations, the debate over the necessity and practicality of a bilingual educational system will likewise grow more prevalent. In fact, recent studies have shown that immigrant children are “the fastest growing sector of the U.S. child population.” Although at its birth the United States faced a rich ethnolinguistic diversity and employed a multitude of educational policies, the country has largely seen the assimilation of linguistic minorities into the larger English-speaking majority.
However, as the United States faces increased linguistic diversity, bilingual education will undoubtedly reemerge as an issue of national importance. Facing the issue of linguistic heterogeneity, lawmakers might benefit from an examination of the policies of other nations that have historically dealt with large populations of linguistic minorities. This Note offers a comparative analysis of the bilingual education policies enacted in several other nations that have faced the challenge of effectively educating significant populations of linguistic minorities. In the end, my analysis offers suggestions of how policymakers in the United States might best learn lessons from the experiences of these nations.
In Part I, I will present a concise overview of the history of bilingual education in the United States and the controversial state initiatives that have fomented to mandate certain forms of bilingual education in the last several decades. In Part II, I will examine the heated debate that has occurred over the effectiveness of various iterations of bilingual education policies throughout the states. In Part III, I will undertake a comparative analysis of the policies of several other nations that have had to address the needs of linguistic minorities. Specifically, I will analyze the policies of South Africa and Singapore. Within this analysis, I will present a succinct context to the social, political, and legal issues driving bilingual education policies within each country. I will identify the policies’ purported goals, the policies that have been undertaken in an effort to attain these goals, and the measured and perceived outcomes of the policies to date. I will conclude the analysis with recommendations to policymakers in the United States in crafting successful, equitable, and politically feasible policies that better address the needs of linguistic minorities in achieving proficiency in English and ensure adequate educational opportunities. Ultimately, I conclude that the lack of ideological consistency in bilingual education policies has significantly impaired the ability of school systems to meet these needs. As such, a more cohesive policy should be put in place to provide bounded guidance to the states in promoting effective means to educate language minorities.
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