Another feature of the discussion of bilingual education is that it overwhelmingly concerns the English language, either as the primary or secondary language. This could suggest that cognitive arguments are a ‘side-show’ for what is essentially a socio-economic dynamic.
The politics of Bilingual Education
The most high profile political debate over bilingual education undoubtedly took place in 1998 in California in the run up to the vote on Proposition 227, the plebiscite that sought to restrict and roll back bilingual education programs and promote English as the language of education for all children. The leader of the pro- proposition movement was Ron Unz, who authored and largely financed the campaign. Unz is a known conservative Republican Silicon Valley millionaire. He was lambasted by academic linguists among others in one typical criticism Leistyna asserts that ‘If we truly want to raise the English-speaking skills of non-native speakers, we can surely find more reliable guidance than this draconian solution championed by a monolingual, multimillionaire with no children, and with no background in education or linguists’. The most recent evidence of the political colours in the debate over bilingualism versus English primacy was seen in Missouri USA where in November 2008 voters approved a largely symbolic measure to adopt English as the states’ official language by a landslide 86.3%. While this is an overwhelming figure perhaps more significant was the 96% of Republicans who supported it compared to the 57% of Democrats. This reinforces the belief that bilingual education is a cause mainly supported by academics and those on the progressive left and opposed by conservatives from the right.
One of the main areas of political debate has been over the costs of bilingual education when compared to monolingual. Employing bilingual teachers, purchasing additional bilingual text books and other material are generally agreed to increase costs. Supporters of bilingual education counter this by pointing out that the long term costs of having significant numbers of children fall behind, in terms of their life outcomes and productivity far outweigh these initial investments. Rhul (2004) highlights that these costs also manifest themselves in higher prison populations as a result of increased drop out rates among those learners who do not have English as a first language or access to quality genuine bilingual education.
The leading pro- bilingual education body in the United States is the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE).
Critics of bilingual education programs such as the English First Foundation also question why funds are given to limited English proficient students who score below a certain percentile on a standardised English test when many who have English as their first language also score lowly and do not receive the additional funding. They also believe that ‘Like many government programs, once a program is in place, the bureaucrats who run it search out an ever-expanding list of people who "need" the program but are not being served’(English First Foundation Feb 2000)
Case Study: the USA
As previously mentioned, nowhere is the controversy surrounding Bilingual Education more evident than in the USA where it has been a matter of great debate since the 1960’s. There has been legislation supporting it then banning it, there has even been Supreme Court involvement.
In the USA, the academic and political debate regarding Bilingual Education reached its zenith in 1998 with California’s Proposition 227. This initiative sought to ban the teaching of subjects in languages other than English. It was approved by 61% to 39% on June 2nd of that year. We can see in this debate a clear example of how the issue of bilingual education goes beyond public education and academic considerations and into the areas of language as power and the tensions between ethnic identity on the one hand and cultural integration on the other. The California vote was seen as a victory for those who argued that a successful society needed to share, by and large, the same cultural values and underpinning this, should have the same language.
We should also bear in mind that particularly in the USA the Bilingual education sector has been a substantial one as an article in the LA Times contemporary with the Proposition 277 debate highlighted that
There’s big money in bilingual education. The state each year kicks in at least $244 million; the feds a minimum $50 million. Actual figures are elusive. Many jobs are involved. About 85,000 teachers are assigned to students deemed “limited English proficient,” according to the state Department of Education. Of these, 24,000–including 9,700 in L.A. County–are purely bilingual teachers, instructing children solely in their home language. The other 61,000 use various bilingual tools–visuals, tutors–while teaching in English.
Since the substantial vote in favour of Proposition 277 similar popular votes have been passed in Arizona and Massachusetts replacing education programs that taught academic subjects in two languages with those offering short term immersion in English to enable ongoing education in the English language. Bucking the trend, in 2002, Colorado rejected the ending of bilingual programs with the support of their own wealthy benefactor. Despite this setback, those opposed to bilingual education can claim to have already substantially curtailed such education for more than 50% of speakers of other languages.(ProEnglish.org)
Case Study: Hong Kong (400 words)
As was common practice throughout the British Empire there was no official language status accorded in Hong Kong throughout its more that 150 year period of rule over Hong Kong. As in other countries English was used for public administration and was largely the preserve of the ‘educated classes’. In the final decade of British rule the 1991 census found that while the 1991 census reports that 29.4% of the people of were able to speak English those using it as their usual language accounted for only 2.2% of the country. Following the widely held belief that using the L1 as the medium for education and as something that was more efficient in the development of knowledge post – colonial Hong Kong has seen the spread of Cantonese as the medium for secondary education.
The debate in Hong Kong has been of a significantly different nature than that in the USA and one driven by preference rather than necessity. While it is true that both countries use some kind of bilingual education, Hong Kong’s deployment of bilingual education appears is driven by a different set of needs and is less controversial than in the United States. Considering that most Hong Kong students can speak fluent Cantonese their motivation to undertake bilingual education is mostly the expression of a preference, usually in order to advance their careers. In the US the need is more pressing as it often involves recent immigrants who have little or no ability to communicate in the predominant language and risk economic exclusion as a result.
In a development that seems to mirror the work of academic linguists in the US the Hong Kong government recognised that educational learning should be maximised in the L1 (Cantonese) as a precursor to more qualified bilingualism in the later stages of education. The idea that a threshold should be attained in the L1 before bilingual education was put forward by Swain (1986) following her research into bilingual education in Hong Kong. It was largely adopted as the way forward by the Hong Kong government. She argued ‘enrolment [in bilingual education programs] should be restricted to those students who have demonstrated a high level of cognitive academic proficiency in Chinese and who have demonstrated a level of English to be able to benefit from instruction in it’ (Swain 1986).
In the absence of colonial imperative or direction the bilingual education debate is now driven by enlightened self interest with Hong Kong’s reliance on its position as an international trading hub for prosperity. To continue with this role a significant pool of bilingualism is seen as desireable.
Case Study: Pakistan (400 words)
A discussion of the research into Bilingual Education
In the United States, the fact that during the period 1968 to 2002 most bilingual education programmes were funded by the Federal government may be behind the oft cited lack of quality research available to support. Mcquillan (2005) argues that as these studies were in fact evaluations undertaken in support of applications for funds they do not stand up to academic scrutiny and when ‘subjected to the rigors of university-level examination, they fall short of the mark’. He goes on to argue that only 10% of studies are sufficiently methodologically robust but that this 10% is very important.
Krashen and McField 2005 brought together a group of five Meta Analyses (analyses of large numbers of studies together rather than individual studies). They used the idea of a size of effect as expressed as a single number. The effect being the level of positive or negative impact that Bilingual education had on educational outcomes. The benchmark of 0.20 as a small impart, 0.5 as a modest one and 0.8 a large impact, was adopted. This resulted in a range of effects from 0.18 to 0.33 with a mean score of 0.26. They conclude that
However Freeman is categoric in pointing out that research supports the notion that bilingual education plays an important role.
“The cumulative evidence from research conducted over the last the decades at sites around the world demonstrates conclusively that cognitive, social, personal and economic benefits accrue to an individual who has an opportunity to develop their bilingual repertoire when compared to a monolingual counterpart” (Garcia P10)
Whilst the balance of research seems to support the idea that bilingual education is beneficial it does not have the conclusiveness that we may wish to see. This can be largely put down to the fact that there are so many variables within the programs themselves and differing levels of quality in both the programs and the studies made of them including those inconsistencies arising from a lack of peer review and neutrality in those studies that are more accurately described as funding justifications.
Conclusion (500 words)
There are two main barriers to offering a definitive answer to the question that forms the title of this essay. Firstly, bilingual education takes on so many different forms in a wide range of countries across the globe. There is by no means a universal model and programs are adopted or opposed for a whole gamut of reasons. Secondly, research into the subject has been somewhat inconclusive
The suggestion that a learner who is unable to advance their knowledge of the full range of academic subjects using their L1 will be disadvantaged when compared to one who is, seems entirely plausible at a cognitive level. This is backed up by significant if not overwhelming research. On the other hand, there seems to be a certain logic behind the notion that social and cultural cohesion is served by a common language. Though accepting this leads immediately to the question – ‘Whose language?’ and the domain of power relationships. If Foucault is right in suggesting that ‘power is everywhere’ then it is certainly present in language. It is perhaps as a result of this that whilst academic opinion overwhelmingly supports bilingual education this support is not reflected in the non-academic commentary found in opinion articles in newspapers and magazines.
To accept the efficacy of bilingual education is to accept that language learning skills are transferable from one language to another. It then follows that it is desirable to let a learner develop their L1 to the furthest extent so that they are in the best possible position to learn the L2. Krashen asserts that giving children top quality teaching in their L1 also gives them ‘knowledge [which] helps makes the English they here more comprehensible’ and ‘literacy, which transfers across languages’.
It certainly seems that the best examples of bilingual education have been shown to produce significantly positive results but then so have the best examples of any learning program. Whether or not we can yet assert that bilingual education is beneficial on a mass scale is less certain. We can, however, be sure that whether it is in a remedial situation, as in the USA, or in an elective one as in Hong Kong or Pakistan, bilingual education is inevitably a political and socio-economic issue as much as a linguistic one.
Bibliography
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