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 By the late 19th century, educational debates were still echoing on
“who was to be educated?” and “how this education was to be carried
out?” Such philosophers as John Dewey and (closer to us) Jean Piaget
understood that “all knowledge has a special origin and the interests
of the child are the primary source of learning” (Spring 1989). The
same author said that after the Civil War black leaders, particularly
W.E. Dubois and Booker T. Washington debated not the importance of
schooling but the kind of education for blacks.
By the late 19th century, educational debates were still echoing on
“who was to be educated?” and “how this education was to be carried
out?” Such philosophers as John Dewey and (closer to us) Jean Piaget
understood that “all knowledge has a special origin and the interests
of the child are the primary source of learning” (Spring 1989). The
same author said that after the Civil War black leaders, particularly
W.E. Dubois and Booker T. Washington debated not the importance of
schooling but the kind of education for blacks. The latter, considered
by many blacks as a traitor, would acquiesce with the 1895 Plessy v.
Ferguson decision that said under segregation schools can be separated
and remained equal. According to Perkinson (1991), Washington addressed
publicly in 1895,
“….The Negro did not want social equality, that
he did not need social equality with the whites. Nor did he want or
need political or civil equality … but cooperation with their white
friends. Negro education should be devoted to the practical education
of earning a living.” P.48
But Dubois vehemently rejected that
position and argued for equal rights. Meanwhile, diverse segments of
society had been restless protecting their interests after the inaction
of Plessy v. Ferguson. The US Supreme Court solved many cases in favor
of minorities such as Peirce v. Society of sisters (1922,
unconstitutionality of forcing public schooling only) or Virginia State
Board of Education v. Barnette (1940, unconstitutionality of forcing
Jehovah Witness to salute the flag). None of them delivered a blow to
the racist establishment more significant than Brown v. Board of
Education of (1954), which stipulated that separate education was
inherently unequal. That decision invigorated the position of such
minority leaders as Dr. Martin L. King who had long said that the
reality of equality will require extensive adjustments in the way of
life of the white majority, an adjustment many are unwilling to make”,
( Smith & Chunn, 1989). The Brown decision opened the valve for a
flurry of other specific legislations to right the educational wrongs
done to minorities. For, Perkinson (1991) stated that black parents
realized that their children were failing in schools not because they
were culturally deprived but because the schools were incompetent to
teach black students who, indeed, had a culture, a different culture.
I
remain convinced that, on the part of many folks, it was not a matter
of how to educate our culturally different children, but a deliberate
case of not willing to do so. If we take, for example, Shor and Freire
(1987), “It is not education which shapes society, but on the contrary,
it is society that shapes education according to the interests of those
who have power” p.35; and Perkinson (1991) “By 1965 the schools had
polarized American society into self-satisfied whites and victimized
blacks, into despondent city dwellers and indifferent suburb amenities
by identifying and creating winners and losers” p.220, we shall see
that these points of view (Freire/Shor’s and Perkinson’s) are in direct
contradiction while both being sensitive and in the interests of the
unfortunate, that include the children of the immigrants.
Bilingual Education
History & Rationale.
As children of the lower class were failing in school and in life,
bilingual education (originally) was not meant to rescue them. On the
contrary, it was designed to catch up with the Soviets after their
launching of the Sputnik, the first manned satellite (Cazabon, 1993).
Through the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), the United States
Government hoped to be competitive scientifically and technologically
while being sophisticated in languages and cultures. As waves of
immigrants kept crashing onto our shores, the Federal government passed
a series of legislations and decisions to deal with the problem among
which the 1965 Elementary & Secondary Education Act (to attack
poverty), the 1967 Bilingual Education, the 1974 Lau vs. Nichols
(special aid to non-English speaking pupils) and the 1980 Department of
Education regulation (mandated Transitional Bilingual Education
nationwide for limited English proficient students). Despite all those
efforts, Lambert held that there were two faces of Bilingualism; one
for language minorities and the other for the mainstream Americans
(Cazabon, 1993). To such conservative politicians as former Senator
Hayakawa, Bilingual Education would hinder the English development of
immigrants (Minami & Kennedy, 1991). To those critics, Jim Cummings
replied that students who experienced a preschool program in which: a)
their cultural identity was reinforced, b) their was active
collaboration with parents; and c) meaningful use of language was
integrated into every aspect of daily activities; these pupils were
developing high level of conceptual and linguistic skills in both
language. Supportively, Krashen (1983) indicated that all languages are
acquired the same way through four development stages, namely silent
period or comprehension, early production, speech emergence, and
intermediate fluency. Given time, a comprehensible input, and a lower
affective filter (anxiety-free) the young immigrant will excel.
The
situation of bilingual education let to believe that the authorities
either want to assimilate every child into the main culture or to
create bad cases of bilingual programs for the minorities where they
would be proficient in neither language. In reply Skutnabb-Kangas
(1986) had put forward the Declaration of Linguistic Human Rights (the
rights to identify with, to learn, and to choose when to use one’s
mother tongue), especially in relation to small children, where it “is
close to criminal, real psychological torture to use monolingual
teachers who do not understand what the child has to say in her mother
tongue” (Skutnabb-Kangas & Cummins, 1986) p.28. Nonetheless, they
registered many cases of positive as well as negative bilingual
programs. The additive (positive) Bilingualism has been mostly
experienced abroad, whereas most of the subtractive ones have been
found in the United States.
Models of Bilingual Programs.
When
Lau vs. Nichols was settled, it left the establishment too much leeway
even though it cited the school districts for violations of the
fourteenth Amendment and the Title VI of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
According to Lyons (1990), the law did not seek any specific remedy,
but only that the Board of Education apply its expertise to the
problems and rectify the situation. Therefore, in its implementation
worldwide, Bilingualism had two faces depending on whom it was called
to serve. It could be implemented and verified as the best form of
education (for the elite, the middle/upper class) or the worst case of
educational formation (for the minorities, the working/lower class).
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