Bilingual Education

Re “Bilingual Education: A Squandered Opportunity,” editorial, Oct. 26: It was with a great deal of surprise and gratitude that I read your objective analysis of the current bilingual education condition. Detractors of the program continually choose to ignore the primary goal of bilingual education as stated so simply and clearly in your editorial: “Successful academic achievement requires every student to master English. That is the ambitious goal of bilingual education.” I am in complete agreement with the three-year limit in the program. Bilingual education continues to evolve.

CHRISTINE P. HAIDOS

Retired bilingual teacher

L.A Unified School District

Your editorial made a poor assumption in citing the standardized test scores at Cahuenga Elementary School as solely a reflection of their bilingual program. So many factors influence test scores that it is simply impossible to give the credit (or blame) to the bilingual program without first controlling for home environment, motivation, socioeconomic status, educational level of parents, teaching staff, principal and myriad other influences.

By the way, why didn’t you cite a Spanish/English bilingual program?

ALICE GIBBS

West Hills

The editorial says that bilingual programs work best in classes that include children fluent in English.

English-speaking children have no need to learn or use Spanish. Spanish is useful to relatively few English-speaking persons. The resources of the school and the time of these children would be used far better in having the children learn other material that will be necessary or useful in their lives.

It is senseless to teach an English-speaking child arithmetic in Spanish. Such a child should use English as much as possible--all the time--in order to develop his command of the language. Spanish should be used as the language of instruction only so far as it is necessary and useful in teaching English to Spanish-speaking students.

CARTER SQUIRE

Alhambra