Essay on "Bilingual Education in Elementary Schools"

Essay 4 pages (1254 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bilingual Education

Como Se Dice en

In the 21st century the world will come closer and closer together as trade among country increases and we are drawn together as a race against environmental perils. To meet the challenges posed by our times, workers and citizens will have to have a range of skills available to them, from the scientific to the psychological to the linguistic. This paper looks at one of the skills that will be most useful in the coming decades: Bilingual language skills. The United States lags behind many other nations in ensuring that its citizens can speak more than one language, and this is an educational and political (and economic) policy that must be changed.

There are two fundamentally different types of bilingual education. In the first type -- which is by far the more common form in the United States -- children who speak little or no English are taught the country's major language. This is an extremely important strategy and serves many children well. However, another form of bilingual education is even more important because it has the potential to affect every elementary school student in the country in a positive way. This essay argues that all American children should be taught at least one second language when they are young and when their ability to learn language is greatest. As an overview of bilingual education notes: "At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proficiency in only one language is not enough for economic, societal, and educational success. Global interdependence and mass communication often require the ability to function in more than one language" (Bilingual education).

When the term "bilingual education" comes up, it is generally within the context of students whose first language is something other than English -- usually Spanish. Rather than arguing that there should be such a near-exclusive focus on teaching students how to speak English, I would argue that teaching English-speaking students languages such as Chinese and Spanish should be taught from the earliest grades on. Such a shift in American educational policy would be advantageous to our country, improving world communication and so be a force in forging peaceful resolutions to the conflicts that will continue to occur across the globe. Americans who have bilingual skills will also be able to work more productively in our globalized economy.

It is well established that learning a second (or third) language before puberty is much easier than learning a language later in life, which is why bilingual education should begin in elementary school rather than waiting until high school as is now generally the case. Despite the fact that it is well-known that younger children are better able to learn another language, various pressures have pushed the teaching of foreign languages until later and later grades in part because standardized testing minimizes the importance of foreign languages. However, this is a short-term strategy on many levels, as this long-term advocate for teaching foreign languages to young children argues:

Not only is learning a foreign language easier for children than it is for adults, but children who are exposed to other languages also do better in school, score higher on standardized tests, are better problem solvers and are more open to diversity, says Francois Thibaut, who runs the Language Workshop for Children, which has nine schools around the East Coast. & #8230; in foreign languages for babies and children. (Walton, 2007)

Other nations require their students to learn at least one foreign language as young children: There is no reason why American children should not be held to the same standard and thus share in the same potential benefits as students in other nations.

Not only does bilingual education increase the ability of individuals to communicate in a foreign… READ MORE

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