According to HISD's own statistics, Carlos isn't that unusual. There are 35,000 students in bilingual classes and 58,000 with so-called Limited English Proficiency, some of them in ESL classes and some who've waived their way out of the program entirely. The district has an enrollment of more than 12,000 immigrants in this country for three years or less. So the overwhelming number of kids in bilingual classes are from here.
Deron Neblett
First-grade teacher Teresa Nuñez spends most of the day in Spanish.
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Any English-speaker who has studied a foreign language would regard this time spent each day learning English as being a bit on the light side. As for the comforting rationalization that these kids will somehow pick up English by being in American society, by hearing it on TV, well, if that would do it, why hasn't it? When the kids go to the cafeteria, they sit with their class. When kids go to recess, they play with other members of their class. Actual opportunities for holding stimulating chats with English-speaking students just don't sound too likely.
And putting the study of English at the end of a long school day, when teachers know they are the least likely to have children's attention, certainly underlines the lack of priority being placed on acquiring English.
Carlos took a wrong turn on the first day of school when he couldn't raise his hand and ask in English for permission to go to the bathroom. Shipped off to bilingual classes, he has never been able to get out. Whether it's the extra money the district is getting for him or the extra money the school is able to pay his bilingual teachers, or his basic inability to conquer English, the fact is the horizons of Carlos and others like him have been narrowed.
Spanish is a great and important language. We should never return to the days when speaking Spanish wasn't tolerated in U.S. schools. Considering the history of Texas and its geopolitical situation, Spanish should be the language that students opt for when they take a foreign language (and it would be much better if this were started earlier than middle school or high school).
But this is an English-speaking nation. English is the language of business and communication throughout the world. A Polish pope puts a letter in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and what language does he use? English. Children living in the United States need to learn the main language of this country so they can grow up to be adults who are able to compete effectively in a country whose commerce demands that we speak English.
Continue bilingual education, by all means. No child should have to sit lost in a class, unable to comprehend what is going on. Celebrate the good teachers and the good principals in the bilingual system (and root out the lousy ones who are only there because they speak another language, not because they can teach). Accept as a given that some kids are going to need the special help of being taught in a language other than English. But as Shadwick and Vasquez say, recognize that certain amendments need to be made to the bilingual program. Restore some balance toward the English-language portion of the curriculum, and get these kids into regular classes sooner.
Otherwise, many of these children will grow into adults shut off from certain options in life. And we're not helping anybody by doing that.
E-mail Margaret Downing at margaret.downing@houstonpress.com.
