Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Quote is Simply Inaccurate
"Bilingualism shuts doors. It nourishes self-ghettoization, and ghettoization nourishes racial antagonism. ... Using some language other than English dooms people to second-class citizenship in American society. ... Monolingual education opens doors to the larger world. ... institutionalized bilingualism remains another source of the fragmentation of America, another threat to the dream of 'one people'." (1991: 108-109)
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
- Students in Kenya spoke English as a second or third language as well as they might speak Kiswahili, Gujerati, or Kikuyu. As an instructor in both countries Cummins found Kenyan students, with Down Syndrome, spoke receptive and expressive language proficiently in their third language (English) equivalent to that of the US monolingual English students with Down Syndrome (Cummins, 2000).
- Summary of California data by Gandara (1999)
concluded:
Listening skills are at 80% of native proficiency by grade 3. Reading and writing skills remain below 50% of those for native speakers. Not until after grade 5 do different sets of skills begin to merge. Students may be able to speak and understand English at fairly high levels of proficiency within the first three years of school, however, the academic skills in "English" reading and writing, take longer for students to develop.
Two big reasons for a difference - Social skills are less complicated to learn and come with more environmental cues than leaerning academics which have fewer environmental cues. The other big difference is L1 [one language] learners are not sitting and waiting, but are also progressing. - Poor children get off to a bad start before they are born. Their mothers get prenatal care later, if at all, which can impair intellectual functioning. They are also more than three times as likely as non-poor children to have stunted growth. They are about twice as likely to have physical and mental disabilities, and are seven times more likely to be abused or neglected. And they are more than three times likely to die (USA Today 1999: 19A Gerald W. Bracey)
- The child poverty level in the United States is more than 20%, substantially higher than any other industrialized nation. This makes America uniquely handicapped because of the massive amounts of poverty. As long as this is tolerated, how can education reform will work?
- When students conversational English is “caught up”, then the perception of the teachers is - "Why aren't students doing better academically?" They are unaware of the three year lag that exists between having skills for language and having skills for academic growth, which can explain and may attribute lack of success to variables other than the child.
- Fully bilingual Hispanics earn nearly $7 000 per year more than their English only counterparts (Latino link yahoo.com).