La Influencia Bilingue

Throughout many years, bilingual education has been known as programs where students are taught in two languages. The program starts with the students’ native language and a second language to reach full proficiency in both languages. As Maria Estela Brisk states, this type of education is “employed either for educational enrichment or to address the needs of a nation’s multilingual student body”(Brisk, 2006:15). They are created to help immigrant students to acquire a second language when they arrive to a new country. In addition, in today’s society we live in a multicultural world where many cultures are in practice. In school settings, there are students from all over the world that are not adjusted to their new environment. This is where bilingual education plays a huge role. Theyneed to ease the process of immigrant students and welcome them to their new “home”. However, bilingual education became very controversial when they started implementing them in public schools for language minority students.
In other countries, bilingual education is classified as quality education because students are learning a second language. Students that attend these types of schools comefrom privilege families. These countries accept multilingualism and are willing to bring more opportunities to students in order to succeed. On the other hand, United States does not have the same perception of bilingual education as other countries. During the early 1950’s, schools that implemented bilingual programs where located at urban areas to only serve immigrant students. It was associatedwith minority students who did not speak English, the national language of United States. These students only spoke their mother tongue. After the American Revolution, schools were allowed to use languages from communities in order to teach students. But once English was established as the only language to use in classrooms, this became a problem for those who did not speak the language. This allhappen in the beginning of the 20th century that “legal, social, and political forces strongly opposed maintenance of languages other than English” (Heat, 1981 as cited in Brisk 2006:16). Due to this, United States become a monolingual society and did not accept other languages in school settings. Teachers were even punished if another language was being used in the classroom. This became such acontroversial that other states took a different type of precaution.
Since English is the national language of U.S., certain states knew it was better to have English as the official language. People had to insure that other languages were not going to take over the country. This demonstrates that United States citizens were xenophobic because they did not want the “foreigners” to take over thecountry. Immigrants from all over the world kept coming to America, the land of opportunities, bringing with them their cultures. Citizens were afraid to lose against the immigrants and knew that if they received education in English, they were going to be “unified” and “uplifted” (Brisk, 2006:22). They perceived these immigrants as uneducated people that if they only learn English, they will beaccepted into the American society. Throughout all these years, language has been manipulated by political power since “language politics are determined by material interests----struggles for social and economic supremacy” (Crawford 2000:10 as cited in Brisk 2006:22). They do not care about the people who struggle to learn a second language. Citizens of U.S were concerned about theirself-interest. They wanted to have power and to continue having more opportunities to make money. If another language and culture took over the nation, the speakers of English would not have the opportunities that they have now.
Even though bilingual education was not politically, socially and economically supported, more people kept attacking. Once it was established that English had to be the only...