Sociological / Psycholinguistic   Bases of Bilingual Education

Notebook: 07, Gore Teacher Plan

Election time is approaching and Al Gore is feeling the need to bolster his stance on education. His opponent is, arguably, an integral part of the Texas success story in education. Every year of his governorship test scores in Texas have gone up. Gore sees this and does what comes naturally to him, he figures throwing money, federal money, at the problem along with increasing the certification requirements for teachers will solve the problem.

 Whether or not Gore’s plan for education has merit in a general sense, it could be detrimental to bilingual education. In order to have a strong bilingual education program, a school must be able to provide quality instruction in the student’s first language, in this case Spanish. The problem lies in the very education system under which this nation relies to produce teachers. There is a shortage of individuals that have ample knowledge of the Spanish language and a four-year degree.

 Why is this? There are multiple parts. First is the way this country looks down on most any degree conferred on an individual by a Spanish speaking country –Spain not included-. Second is the transitional/submersive nature of the bilingual education system in this country. And third the low number of Hispanics attending, much less graduating from college.

 Of the millions of immigrants this country has received over the past few decades, few from Latin America are currently gainfully employed as per their education would merit. Our nation discounts the educational merit of most degrees originating from the third world. Consequently, with the exception of some Cuban American teachers, thousands of qualified, professional teachers are not allowed to teach. Those that are teaching have been made to overcome substantial bureaucratic and linguistic obstacles. The introduction of more “standards” means increased bureaucracy which means still fewer qualified Spanish speaking educators will be able to make the administrative jump from teaching in their former country to the United States. In the immediate future, foreign trained Spanish speaking educators are our best option if our goal is to offer children quality bilingual education.

 One of the main reasons as to why there are so few domestically educated instructors with a command of the Spanish language is the efficient job the United States has done in assimilating language minority students. Many such students, after going through middle and high school with typically no first language maintenance, feel removed from and intimidated by their own language. Through infrequent academic use and social pressures, Spanish has taken a non-role in their school lives and in their personal identity. The linguistic genocide of our language minority populous has greatly reduced the pool of individuals from which bilingual education may draw.

 Thirdly, very few Hispanic children are afforded the opportunity to go to college much less graduate. If there is a group of individuals who represent this nation’s best hope for providing quality bilingual education to the language minority population they are native Spanish speaking, US educated Hispanics. This group is not large due to some of the reasons stated above and others not mentioned.

 I think what Gore says is quite palpable for the US electorate; however what he proscribes may not be the best plan of action for bilingual and monolingual classrooms.

Course Components:

1. Cognitive Theories Paper  
2. Legal Cases Analytical Paper 
3. Presentation 
4. Notebook 
5. Paper 
6. Professional Development