4 thoughts on “Bilingual Education, ¿Si o No?

  1. OP ED ESSAY BY A. PANTOJA & L. REYES
    “We‚re Bilingual and We‚re Here to Stay”

    We are filled with great sadness to note that 40 years after the founding of ASPIRA of New York, Inc., the premier educational organization in the Puerto Rican community, so many Puerto Rican and other Latino voices remain unheard in the great bilingual education policy debate. The Puerto Rican communities of New York City like the Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans and other Latin American communities, have always understood that Spanish-English bilingualism and biliteracy are indispensable tools for personal growth, community development and sociocultural advancement.

    ASPIRA was founded in 1961 at a time of great trial for our Puerto Rican youth. The mission was then, and continues now, to be the development of leadership skills among our Latino youth to build a strong bilingual, bicultural base. Biliteracy is tied to academic achievement, ethnic awareness, understanding, and self-affirmation, and an ethic of social responsibility and problem solving. Much of the Puerto Rican leadership in our City today, cut its teeth in ASPIRA leadership clubs. ASPIRA answered unofficial school policies of monolingualism and monculturalism with extra-curricular learning about the struggles and contributions of Puerto Ricans while supporting and counseling our youth into college and professional careers.

    ASPIRA‚s leadership development and educational philosophy produced a

    leadership active in the life of the City such as Fernando Ferrer, now Bronx

    Borough President, Angelo Falcon, Policy Executive of the Puerto Rican Legal

    Defense and Education Fund, Aida Alvarez, recent Executive of the U.S. Small

    Business Administration, and Judge Nelson Diaz, member of the legal firm, Rome, Cominsky and Blank. As high school student activists, they marched and

    sat in at Board of Education headquarters to demand bilingual classes and qualified bilingual teachers. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, in fact, grew out of the federal lawsuit brought by ASPIRA against the City Board on behalf of non-English-speaking Puerto Rican students.

    The hard-won 1974 compromise called the ASPIRA Consent Decree established bilingual instruction as a legal entitlement for these students. The agreement included, from the beginning, language arts and other core content learning (math, science and social studies) in Spanish and English-as-a-second-language instruction. Unfortunately, hat had begun as a

    community struggle for equal educational opportunity and a demand for quality

    bilingual-bicultural education was turned into a transitional bilingual program with a compensatory mindset that was at the mercy of the City‚s then financial crisis.

    The neo-conservative response of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy to the recently published Board studies on the progress of English language learners echoed much of that earlier era’s animosity to bilingualism. With the help of compliant tabloids, the official research findings of “substantial success” of bilingual and ESL classes were twisted into a story-line of “bilingual failure” and a pretext for the introduction of English immersion instruction.

    Ironically, the City Board had turned a deaf ear during the 1990s to Latino community calls for reform and improvement of bilingual education.

    Two reports of the Board‚s own Latino Commission on Educational Reform (chaired by one of the writers) provided a comprehensive blueprint at the time, including recommendations for recruiting certified bilingual and ESL teachers and expanding the most effective program model, two-way bilingual or dual language instruction. No significant reforms were initiated.

    Boards of Education have come and gone over the last 40 years, and will continue to do so. However, no amount of pressure from them, from New York City mayors or from editorial boards will change our communities‚ determination to exist as biliterate, bicultural citizens in this most global of cities.

    We live in a city, country and world where many jobs demand the knowledge of two languages, Spanish being one of them. The knowledge and command of two or more languages has been the mark of a well-educated person. Puerto Rican and other Latino children and the children of Chinese, Haitian and other recently-arrived New Yorkers come to school with the basic knowledge of the language and culture of their home and parents. The school must teach them English while they continue to develop their knowledge of

    their home language and culture. We reject mindless assimilation that would

    deny our children a quality education, deny us our human right to our mother

    tongue and cultural heritage and inculcate in our children self hate and a

    sense of shame for the language and culture of their parents. There are in

    history too many instances of the dangers when the cultural arrogance of a

    dominant group is imposed on a minority population.

    What some classify as “foreign-language ghettos” are, in fact, vibrant bilingual and ESL classrooms. When based on theoretically sound principles, sustained for at least five years, and well-implemented and well-funded, these bilingual classrooms are laboratories for linguistic enrichment, academic achievement and multicultural democracy. Distortions of statistical findings by the Mayor‚s “Bilingual Education” Task Force and multimillionaire, Ronald Unz cannot hide their animus against the

    inevitability, not to mention desirability, of biliteracy.

    The 21st century requires citizens and workers who bring added value to our City and to our global society. The subtractive ideology of the melting

    pot is not only an anachronism of the early 20th century, but also a clear

    and present danger to Puerto Ricans and other citizens and residents of Latin

    American descent who assert our determination to be Americans who speak two languages. We are bilingual and bicultural. And, we are here to stay.

    by:

    Antonia A. Pantoja, Ph.D.

    (Founder of ASPIRA of New York, Inc. and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom)

    Luis O. Reyes, Ph.D.

    (Asst. Professor, Brooklyn College and former Member of the New York City Board of Education)

  2. SI!
    The rationale for bilingual education has not referred to an equally important area of bilingual education: on the job training.

    In the agency where I work, we serve as a placment site for college interns, and in many cases the English speaking capacity of the students is severely limited. The challenge is that in [most] cases, where the ability to learn is clearly evident, in spite of the language barrier, bilingual on the job training is the only way that capable students can learn the job. Ultimately, as their spoken and written English competency improves, they are able to carry out their duties with the same success as those who speak only English. (Needless to say, there is absolutely no correlation between speaking English and being skillful.)

    Fortunately for the student under my service, I speak Spanish and am willing to bring them along until they are proficient in English. (More than a few have been offered positions.) I think the onus is on the management community to increase the language competency of managers to serve as trainers of persons who come to us with needed skills, who are willing to learn, but who have language barriers that, quite frankly, take practically no time to overcome.

    Bilingual educational programs have traditionally targetted young people in the educational system. A great number of Spanish only speaking adults enter the country and seek work in the human services field, for example,

    but lack the language skills. Even if they are enrolled in universities that favor them, it is unreasonable to expect that their language capacity will improve fully during the course of their university education — not to mention the difference in language skills acquired in the university, and that of the language spoken in the work place.

  3. RE: Well……..maybe!
    When it comes to bilingual education, I have no problem with that, just as long as it remains in the US.
    If the Americans want to have classes in duo languages, go ahead. They need to learn our language. Besides, Spanish is going to be spoken in Heaven. How do I know?. My Bible is in Spanish, thats why.

    But if this is talking about bilingual education in Puerto Rico, then I am totally against it. This is just another scheme by the Americans and PNPs to Americanize the Puerto Rican people. If we learn English, we are going to forget Spanish, and if we forget Spanish, we will forget are culture and adopt the gringo culture.

    I have nothing against the American people. I just dont want to be like them. We are our own people and we must realize that.

    VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!

Leave a Reply