EDUCATION POLITICS-In the midst of an endless barrage of belated education reform proposals coming from Governor Brown, President Obama, and elsewhere that are purportedly designed to improve what has become an abysmal public education system, regrettably one might still ask if anybody really wants minority- and more specifically Latino- children to finally achieve their academic potential? If they actually did, those devising public education policy might try doing something different that has already proven to work well everywhere else in the world where it has been implemented.
With recent studies showing that the bilingual brain is significantly more capable of assimilating more information in any subject than a monolingual brain, one must wonder why America still clings to a monolingual system of public education, where Spanish and other foreign languages are still treated like diseases that young students must be cured of, instead of potential assets to be nurtured as a culturally given advantage that all students and this country might profit from.
Still ignoring the fact that all students have a two-year foreign language requirement for university admission, districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) steadfastly refuse to implement the teaching of a foreign language before high school, even when all research and the experience of all countries with multilingual education systems around the world show that a significantly earlier teaching of foreign languages is much more effective in maintaining or establishing foreign and native language fluency, if given at a time prior to puberty, when human brains find it much easier to assimilate new languages. Simply stated, literacy in any language drives increased fluency in all other languages and unrelated subjects that a student is intelligently exposed to.
Is there any rational reason why, at the very least, the teaching of a foreign language is not commenced in middle school as opposed to waiting until high school?
It is worth mentioning that a country like the Philippines has a highly educated bilingual population that is equally fluent in Tagalog (or other native language) and English. A smart society in a multilingual world doesn't force its population to choose between languages, since it knows there is literally no downside to being multilingual.
Given a present dysfunctional public education reality in the United States, what you might find astounding is that it was American missionary educators after the Spanish-American War at the turn of the last century that went into the newly conquered Philippines and instituted this leading edge bilingual system of education still used in the Philippines, where all school classes might be given in either English or Tagalog. What is achieved is perfect fluency in both languages and in all subjects, since literacy in one language naturally drives literacy in the others.
It also needs to be noted that there are more ways than one to skin a monolingual cat. In Sweden during the 1960s, Sweden brought in guest workers from India. To assure their social integration, the Swedish government at great initial expense, taught these workers their native Hindi language, before attempting to teach them Swedish- and the English that all Swede learn from an early age in school.
What has resulted is a perfectly integrated initially foreign population of Swedish citizens. And for a profound long term benefit, people well integrated into society do not become a burden on the social welfare and criminal justice system.
The first step in turning a more viable method of language acquisition loose in American public education is to understand why there has been such hostility to the maintenance or acquisition of any other language besides English. When this country was founded, it was to a great extent as a safe haven for people escaping from endless European wars- a reprise of which we are presently seeing in the Ukraine.
Since the main component of these cultural conflicts was linguistic and cultural differences, America chose to make the speaking of English and the giving up of other then divisive languages- that had lead to war in Europe and elsewhere- as the price of social integration into this country.
Although those days are clearly over, what remains are still entrenched attitudes that see the exclusive speaking of English as the only true measure of social integration. Most native Americans seem to think that since their ancestors had to give up their native languages, Latinos and others should also be required to do so. I've got news for you, they're not going to.
What is rarely asked is whether the older Americans loss of their native languages and cultures was really necessary and beneficial to their effective social integration in this country. All Danes are completely bilingual with English, which has in no way threatened their social stability- rather it has increased it.
Ironically, the reality of American disproportionate cultural and economic success around the world has always owed a great deal to the melding of American culture with the never ending stream of new immigrant cultures and their unique and different ways of creating an always redefining synthesis of what it is to be an American. This continued healthy evolution has allowed us to remain viable, where other societies have failed.
And yet both native born Americans and many lower socio-economic immigrants continue to circle the wagons out of fear around their respective monolingual visions of America that either speak only English or see the loss of Spanish as something they must defend against in rigidly monolingual societies that refuse to make room for any language that might serve to alter their limited view of life.
When you learn another language you not only develop the ability to communicate with other people, you also develop the fluency to see life the way those who speak that language see by understanding the subjective value they give to words in their language. Ultimately, that which is expressed best in each idiom comes into the common usage of all Americans. I'm hard pressed to see any downside.
Try discussing this subject with a Scandinavian, Indian, Filipino, or one of the 150 million Chinese who are presently learning native level English.
