UA professor defends bilingual education

Eric M. Jukelevics Arizona Daily Wildcat Richard Ruiz, head of the UA reading, language, and culture department, spoke last night on bilingual education in U.S. schools in the DuVal Auditorium of the University Medical Center.

Bilingualism allows people to keep "a sense of their ethnic identity, who they are, and of their community, while at the same time, pledging an allegiance to the United States" said Richard Ruiz, head of the University of Arizona's reading, language, and culture department.

Ruiz spoke about bilingual education in Arizona and the United States to about 50 people last night at the University Medical Center's DuVal Auditorium.

In a speech billed as "the paradox of bilingualism in U.S. schools," Ruiz said there are many political contradictions involving bilingual education.

When Arizona's Proposition 106 was passed in 1988, making English the official state language, the State Department of Education was setting guidelines requiring schools to offer foreign language classes to students in every grade, Ruiz said.

"(Americans) think of language as a tool to get what we want, instead of as a part of our identity, history, tradition and a reflection of who we are," Ruiz said. "When we think of losing a language, we think of losing it to something better, something that gets us something."

According to Ruiz, bilingual education originated in the 1800s with midwestern German immigrants - not in the southwest.

While Ruiz said he supports the efforts to improve bilingual education, debates continue over the state of bilingual educational programs in different areas of the U.S.

Last June, California voters passed Proposition 227, an initiative requiring all students to be taught in the English language.

Ruiz said the California proposition, along with other bilingual education restrictions "ties the hands of the people who are trying their best to teach children through bilingual education."

"It restricts the teachers from doing what they think is best for the children," he said.

There has also been federal political action on bilingual education.

The U.S. House of Representatives last September passed a bill, HR 3892, that would shift federal funds meant for bilingual education to the states in block-grant packages.

Opponents of the bill claim that it would violate 276 voluntary compliance agreements between school districts and the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

Ruiz said that United States bilingual education does not center around its own promotion.

"Bilingual education in this country, at the federal level, has always been about teaching English to people who do not speak it," he said.

An Arizona state report released yesterday that calls for bilingual education reform brings the issue closer to Arizona education programs.

Throughout the report, the state provides evidence of the ineffectiveness of Arizona's bilingual education programs, stating that after one year in these programs only four percent of bilingual students learn enough English to be put into mainstream classrooms.

Many Tucson educators say that the results of the state report were incorrect due to a lack of essential information.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.