Different Voices in the Bilingual Debate

I continue to read about legislative proposals that would ban bilingual education and mandate English-only programs for limited-English-speaking students. Opponents of bilingual education suggest that teaching students in other languages dooms them to the level of second-class citizen. I beg to differ, because as a teacher in a bilingual second-grade classroom, I have seen with my own eyes that bilingual education, when carried out properly, creates successful students in two languages, and that English-only programs doom most limited-English students to failure.

Children need to hear a language for several years before they can analyze it enough to learn its letters and read its words. This is the reason that native English-speaking children can learn these skills at the age of 5 or 6 in kindergarten. We are shortchanging a limited-English-speaking student if we expect him to sort out the different English sounds and letters, much less read words in a language he barely knows. He will not be ready to do this for at least two or three years!

By learning to decode their native language first, and by waiting until they have heard more English, it is easier for children to transfer what they have learned to English. In contrast, we have found that most of the second-grade students who have entered our program from schools where they were taught only in English are substantially behind the students who we have had since kindergarten. Whom are we dooming to failure? The students who are forced to sink or swim in English.

JANE R. SCHRENZEL

Lake Forest

* Re “Anti-Bilingual Education Resolutions Considered,” (March 9): As a lifelong Democrat, I take strong exception to the comments made by Anaheim Union Trustee Joanne L. Stanton that the resolutions under consideration by two local school boards opposing bilingual education are “ . . . straight out of the Republican platform.” The inference is that Republicans are pushing this and inserting partisan politics into the bilingual debate.

Well, I don’t know much about the Republican agenda, but I do know many Democrats who feel that bilingual education is an unsound program that excludes children from the English-speaking mainstream. The bilingual issue cuts across party lines and involves all Americans. It is Stanton who is trying to use politics as a ruse to avoid the real issue, which is the failure of bilingual education.

DIXIE JORDAN

Laguna Beach

* Anaheim Union High School District Trustee Harald G. Martin’s school of thought, or lack thereof, is what needs to be challenged. Martin’s implications that all busboys speak Spanish and that there can’t be any Spanish-speaking doctors and lawyers are inane.

The indictment of Mexico and Hispanics for all bilingual-education problems is not only bigoted, but prejudicial to all non-English-speaking students.

When those entrusted with education promote deprivation, all learning becomes endangered.

CHRISTOPHER J. HERNANDEZ

Huntington Beach