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Keep bilingual education in Arizona schools

In 1998, California's Proposition 227 removed bilingual education from the classroom, forcing students to learn in English despite their proficiency. Nationally, the merits of multilingual high school exit exams are being reviewed. Locally, the Arizona Legislature is facing a similar question as a state initiative to ban bilingual education, sparked by California's English First activist Ronald Unz, is seeping into school board meetings.

Undoubtedly, the ability to function in your nation of residence's tongue is an element of success, but is a weak education for the sake of assimilation better and is the denial of bilingual instruction unconstitutional? Bilingual education must be maintained - yes reformed - but maintained for the children.

A review of the case of the Nogales School district's limited-English students versus the state educational board yields a few interesting pieces of information. Analizabeth Doan felt limited in her abilities to teach the students due to a lack of qualified ESL teachers. Her argument hinged on the grounds that students were being discriminated against. Although the state demands that limited-English students must have the ability to enter some form of bilingual education, the funds are not being supplied. Doan estimates that approximately $500,000 is needed. She was given $16,000.

English for the Children-Arizona, a Tucson-based anti-bilingual organization, is pressing for 101,762 signatures to their proposition by July 6, 2000. If they receive the proper support, there may be no more debates. Chairwoman Maria Mendoza has argued that bilingual programs yield a poor education.

Teachers in Arizona have come to the forefront arguing for and about their students. Hector Ayala of Cholla High School even made an appearance in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, stating that of the 640 freshmen the school takes in each year only 200 graduate. His reasoning was that they don't know how to read English beyond the fourth grade level. This is only part of the problem. Don't lay the blame on bilingual education. Perhaps Cholla should have continued the tradition of bilingual education and retained the students.

English-only proponents forward English as the world's leading language and that students will be best served by learning it, particularly through immersion. However, the idea does not ring as loud for the children as bilingual opposition groups may publicize.

Many limited-English students feel disconnected in English-only classrooms. Students have no concept of the material, nor of the social atmosphere. University of California-Santa Cruz education professor Margaret Gibson found that limited-English students, especially of Mexican lineage, "view school as the enemy." In "Patterns of Acculturation and High School Performance," Gibson relays that immigrant parents support acculturation, but not assimilation. The effect of English-only teaching is assimilation-a denial of heritage and personal ideology weeded out by Amerikana.

Opponents of bilingual education may argue about the cost of such programs, but what is the real concern? Students being denied knowledge should be the focus. Immersion is not the key. Imagine being placed in a class on differential equations taught in Arabic. You'd have a hard enough time with the material, despite the fact that you couldn't even say "I do not understand." How is it any different for these students? Allow them the chance to learn.

Exit exams follow correspondingly. To place students on bilingual courses of learning for the greater part of their academic lives only to test them in an entirely different form and fashion denies the tenets of logic. Why is their knowledge any less valuable for having been expressed in another language? English can be a demanded course and the language can be continued beyond high school, but to hold students down is un-American. However, it would be Amerikan! What's the difference? The society by which we define the U.S.A. Are we here to rise above the world as a nation of leaders, or are we here to herald a concentrated nucleus of domestic corporate expansionists holding the less fortunate down? Allow bilingual testing and give the less fortunate a hand.