Before reading Rosalie Porter's article "Twisted Tongues: The Failure of Bilingual Education," I knew there was a lot of controversy about bilingual education, but was still surprised at Porter's avid stance against it. She talks about the history of bilingual education legislation and how over time, due to lack of accountability and scientific proof supporting the program, it has stayed around far too long with little flexibility for schools to make changes that specifically suit their needs. Porter says that this program is ineffective and students are suffering for it. She says that limited-English students need to be taught English right from the beginning in order to be successful later on in their career and life in general as a United States citizen. Literacy in the native language should be a secondary goal, taught outside of school, if that is what a community wants.
I definitely agree with Porter that schools need to specifically address this issue with a program that is suited to their situation. Blanket legislation for one program for all schools does not work and instead of helping students, in many cases can be a huge drain on time and money. I do have some questions about her stance, though. She does not really specify the root of the problem of students not even learning subject matter taught in their native language. Is it possibly that the native speaking teachers are not certified in those subject areas? If that is the case, perhaps the program would work better if those teaching in the native language were also well versed in the subject matter. However, this could be a difficult requirement to fulfill for many schools. I also believe that lack of accountability is probably less of a problem now than it was 10 years ago when this article was written thanks to No Child Left Behind, who is now closely checking up on everyone almost to a fault. On another note, I have read articles before that support bilingual education with research based on things like higher math scores for Latino/as thanks to students being taught in their native language and lower self-esteem for those students who were in a full on English immersion program. Both of these findings seriously differ from Porter's findings. I am not really sure what to make of all the conflicting research. I guess I would just have to speak with many different teachers, parents, and students who have had a lot of experience with bilingual education.
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5 comments:
This looks great. I like how you related the post to a specific reading.
Break future posts into a few more paragraphs.
Keep up the great work.
Greg
I agree that each school needs to have a specific plan for their school, rather than every school follow one prescribed way. Even each child has different needs within each school. I think the fact that it is a controversial issue makes it difficult to surrender power and let the schools make the decisions.
While I definitely do support the idea of Bilingual Education, you also have to consider what the second language would be. Most people go in with the preconcieved notion that all ESL students are Native in Spanish, which isn't the case. What about those students who speak other languages? Is it fair for them to have to struggle with two new languages? I think it would be great to start teaching in two languages, but I'm not sure how well it would work!
The problem I had with the Porter article is that she really didn’t present any counterarguments in a fair way which really weakened her position. I would also like to see more research on how other countries deal with this issue. For example, In Morocco students are instructed first in Modern Standard Arabic (really a second language since it is quite different than the Moroccan dialect, and a completely different language for native berber speakers). Students are then introduced to French in the first grade, and in high school they choose another foreign language such as English. Most university courses are taught entirely in French. Students who go through this system learn to be academically competent in at least two foreign languages and as far as I know this system seem to work fine. It’s not uncommon for students to finish their University career completely fluent in at least three languages. I think it could only be an advantage to have a system where anyone finishing a University degree regardless of their major would finish their education fluent in at least two languages. In our system even students who finish a degree in a foreign language usually have only an intermediate level of proficiency in a second language.
Bilingual education only works in a school (or district) that has enough of one population to make it work. Larger districts are able to have English/Spanish programs, but smaller districts or districts with diverse ESL populations just don't have that luxury. I agree, that ESL programs need to be catered to the school and its population. There isn't one simple solution.
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