Essay on "Bilingual Education the Benefits and Challenges"

Essay 9 pages (2522 words) Sources: 8 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bilingual Education

The benefits and challenges of bilingual education for schoolchildren

Bilingual education is an increasingly contentious topic in the United States and indeed around the world, yet much of the debate has centered on idealistic, nationalistic, and ethnocentric issues. This paper attempts to examine the issue of bilingual education from a pragmatic and empiric perspective, identifying the benefits to children and to communities and societies as a whole as well as the challenges that providing bilingual education entails. In general, the available information suggests that the benefits of providing bilingual education to schoolchildren far outweighs the additional challenges that such instruction presents. In fact, it is often the most fiscally challenged and rural areas -- and thus those communities that are faced with the greatest challenges to implementing bilingual education programs -- that receive the greatest benefit from effective and prevalent bilingual education programs.

Introduction

The world is growing increasingly diverse, both in real physical terms and through the use of technologies like the Internet that draw people together from the world over. As people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds interact on a more and more regular basis, linguistic differences are becoming a greater barrier to effective communication and commerce. Bilingual education programs have been started in many different communities in many different countries, and the effects of these programs have generally been both highly evident and extremely positive in fostering a greater preparedness for working in a diverse world.

This is not to suggest that bilingual education programs do not present any additional problems to often-strained educational systems and communities whose identities might already be endangered by increased assimilation and/or encroachment. It has even been suggested that bilingual education can in some instances have the effect of diminishing a certain sense of civic responsibility and shift priorities to a life outside the community (Hu 2008). In addition, there are financial and other practical problems attendant upon implementing and sustaining bilingual education programs, and these programs must continue during adolescence and early adulthood if they are to be truly effective, exacerbating these practical problems (Krashen 1997).

That being said, the benefits that bilingual education programs provide immediately to the children involved in the programs -- and to the community at large in the long-term -- make the challenges that implementing such programs present well wroth tackling. Children who receive a bilingual education are better prepared to enter a world with an increasingly diverse workforce, not simply because they are prepared with a second language but also because the act of learning a second language introduces them to using certain tools and mental faculties necessary for linguistic and cultural translations (Patrinos & Velez 2009; EPE 2004; CABE 2009). These benefits of bilingual education have been noted in children in diverse situations and communities across the globe, including in both urban and rural areas of the United States (NABE 2009; Tucker 1999). Bilingual education has also been linked to higher academic achievement overall (NABE 2009; Patrinos & Velez 2009).

Assimilation vs. Representation

One of the major battlegrounds in the debate surrounding bilingual education is over the idealistic notions of cultural and ethnic identity and language's inherent connection to such concepts. Opponents of bilingual education have claimed both that instruction in a "foreign" tongue in the public schools of a country -- such as, for argument's sake, a bilingual classroom in the United States in which instruction took place in both English and Spanish -- somehow degrades the nationalism, patriotism, and/or responsiveness of what is supposed to be a public institution, and that such education robs native Spanish speakers of their heritage, forcing an assimilation when instead the government should provide for the equal protection -- and education -- of students in Spanish in communities with sufficient need (of which there are many) (CABE 2009; NABE 2009). These two arguments are diametrically opposed to each other insofar as the principles form which they stem, and yet the end result for both is an ideological opposition to the notion of bilingual education despite its practical benefits.

Research has shown, however, that both arguments might be completely fallacious. In a study of bilingual vs. single-language instructional programs in Guatemala (specifically, a review of the results of the nation's Spanish/English and Spanish-only classrooms), not only did students in bilingual classrooms perform better academically overall, but they also achieved higher scores in Spanish language and literature classes than did their counterparts receiving instruction only in Spanish (Patrino & Velez 2009). Far from losing their heritage or degrading the national and/or community identity of Guatemala and the various places where these children attended school, the initial results of this research suggest that bilingual education solidified student's roots in their own language while at the same time expanding their abilities in a wider world.

These findings, and the assumptions and assertions they refute, reflect some of the underlying fears residing in many who oppose the notion of bilingual education, as well as some of the concerns held by proponents of bilingual education programs. Opponents are often scared that their culture, whether it be the dominant one in their cultural surroundings or the minority -- or even, in the case of the Guatemalan study, the introduction of an additional language for the purposes of facilitating later success outside the immediate community -- will begin to lose itself in the other culture whose language is being taught (Hu 2008). Supporters of bilingual education programs, meanwhile, are worried that those who do not speak the dominant language of the culture -- non-English speakers in the United States -- are automatically disenfranchising themselves by removing themselves from the major forums of political discussion and debate.

It comes down to an argument between assimilation vs. adequate representation. It is important to be able to retain a sense of cultural identity while at the same time engaging in a culture other than one's own -- especially if that culture happens to be the dominant one in a given location and therefore the primary operational guide to success in that community (Krashen 1997; Mora 2006). It cannot be helped that one culture might be dominant over another, and though it is right to work towards making a dominant culture not merely tolerant of but actively engaged with other cultures it is wrong to expect one culture to entirely give way for another. A proper educational system would ensure that all people are fully heard and understood.

The study conducted in Guatemala proves that bilingual education provides just such a system. Children receiving bilingual education during the time that the study covered had lower drop out rates, lower levels of repeating grades or courses, higher grades overall, and better retention as well (Patrinos & Velez 2009). This means that they will be better heard both within their own nation and n the global community, not merely because they speak multiple languages but because they are better equipped to handle the complexities of the international community. Their higher scores in Spanish mean that this enhanced possibility for achievement did not come at the cost of their own national and linguistic heritage. Bilingual education programs in the United States could lead to similar increases in the level of representation minority groups are able to avail themselves of, again without dramatic cost to their own ethnic, cultural, or linguistic heritage. Thus, the arguments that claim bilingual education forces assimilation in either direction simply does not hold up to the empirical evidence available.

The Real Cost of Bilingual Education

It is less easy to refute the immensely more measurable practical concerns of many that are opposed to bilingual education. There are several logistical impediments to the development and implementation of bilingual instructional practices, and regardless of the eventual benefits to the overall society through the increased enfranchisement of minority populations and enhanced opportunities for success internationally, these impediments can seem prohibitive to effective bilingual education programs. The practical problems facing bilingual education are not merely financial, either, but there are other concerns that can present serious and possibly insurmountable barriers to forming bilingual education programs in some communities.

The simple availability -- or lack thereof -- of teachers that are adequately prepared and trained for bilingual education programs is one of the biggest problems facing bilingual education program development in many countries (CABE 2009; EPE 2004). Without instructors, it is quite obviously impossible to provide decent bilingual education courses. There is something of a catch-22 inherent to this issue, as the development of bilingual education programs in elementary schools would result in much higher numbers of qualified available teachers, but the lack of such teachers today makes the formation of bilingual education classrooms difficult at best. Training programs at universities do exist, but their expansion and an increased public profile would be of great benefit to the system by providing more qualified bilingual teachers and thus enabling more pervasive bilingual instruction (Tucker 1999).

The sheer cost necessary to implement bilingual education is also seen as prohibitive by many communities,… READ MORE

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