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Bilingual Education Bilingual education in Americ

游客2023-07-29  26
问题                            Bilingual Education
    Bilingual education in America is hundreds of years old, hardly a "new" issue. In 1837, Pennsylvania law required that school instruction be given on an equal basis in German as well as English. In fact, that example provides us with a fairly concise definition of bilingual education, the use of two languages for instruction. But, almost a century later, as America was being pulled into World War I, foreign languages were seen as unpatriotic. Public pressure routed the German language from the curriculum, although nearly one in four high school students was studying the language at the time. Some states went even further. Committed to a rapid assimilation(同化)of new immigrants, and suspicious of much that was foreign, these states prohibited the teaching of any foreign language during the first eight years of schooling.
    Despite the long history of bilingual education in this country, many school districts never really bought into the concept. In districts without bilingual education, students with a poor command of English had to sink or swim (or perhaps, more accurately, "speak or sink"). Students either learned to speak English as they sat in class—or they failed school, an approach sometimes referred to as language submersion. If submersion was not to their liking, they could choose to leave school. Many did.
    Bilingual education had a rebirth in the 1960s, as the Civil rights movement brought new attention to the struggles of many Americans temporarily without citizenship, including non-English speakers trying to learn in a language they did not understand. And, unlike the 1800s, by the 1960s and 1970s education had become less an option and more a necessity, the access to economic success. To respond to this need, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act in 1968.   This act provided federal financial incentives, using what some people call "a carrot approach," to encourage schools to initiate bilingual education programs. Not all districts chased the carrot.
    From the start, the Bilingual Education Act was fraught with problems. The act lacked concrete recommendations for implementation and did not specify standards. Individual school districts and, in some cases, even individual schools, experimented with different approaches. In too many cases, the act simply failed to serve the students it was meant to serve.
    During the early 1970s, disappointed parents initiated lawsuits. In 1974, the Supreme Court heard the case of Lau v. Nichols. This class action lawsuit centered around Kinney Lau and 1,800 other Chinese students from the San Francisco area who were failing their courses because they could not understand English. The Court affirmed that federally funded schools must "correct the language deficiency" of these students. Teaching students in a language they did not understand was not an appropriate education. The Court’s decision in Lau v. Nichols prompted Congress to pass the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA). Under this law, school districts must take positive steps to provide equal education for language-minority students by eliminating language barriers.
    Typically in the bilingual approach, limited English proficiency (LEP) students learn English as a second language while taking other academic subjects in their native language. The transitional approach begins by using the native language as a bridge to English-language instruction. Academic subjects are first taught using the native language, but progressively the students transition to English, to their new language. This is the most widely used approach. The maintenance, or developmental, approach emphasizes the importance of maintaining both languages. The goal is to create a truly bilingual student, one who acquires English while maintaining competence in the native language. Students are instructed in both languages. English as a Second Language (ESL) supplements either the maintenance or transitional programs by providing special ESL classes for additional instruction in reading and writing English.
    As schools struggle to meet the needs of LEP students, bilingual education continues to spark political controversy. Approximately 3 million students speak hundreds of languages and dialects. Misunderstandings are multiplied when language barriers are accompanied by racial and ethnic differences, leading to even greater isolation and segregation for many LEP students. And, while some struggle to make bilingual education work, others believe that it never will:
    Opponents of bilingual education point to studies showing that first-and second-generation Hispanic(西班牙和葡萄牙的)students who attended bilingual programs from the 1970s to the 1990s earned considerably less money than Hispanics who attended "English only" classes. Moreover, Hispanic students who dropped out of bilingual programs were less likely to return and complete high school than were Hispanics who attended English-only programs. LEP parents despair over their children’s lack of progress in learning English and graduating from school. The dropout rates for Hispanic students, the largest group of LEP students, hovers around 50 percent. Many parents of students in bilingual programs now oppose these programs, an ironic turnabout, since it was parent protests in the 1960s and 1970s that forced reluctant schools and the federal government to initiate bilingual education. In 1998, more than 60 percent of the voters in California, including a sizable minority of Hispanic voters, supported an initiative to replace most bilingual maintenance programs with a fast-track transition to English.
    Bilingual education advocates argue that America is a country with diverse cultures and that diversity should be honored and nurtured. One problem, they point out, is that we simply do not have enough competent bilingual teachers who can respond to the large numbers of LEP children now in our schools.
    Through the 1990s, the opponents of bilingual education gained ground as Congress sharply reduced funding for bilingual education. Moreover, a score of "English-only" bills made their way through various state legislatures and Congress. The future of bilingual education is still being defined.
    More than two centuries ago, Ben Franklin expressed his fears about the multiple languages heard on America’s streets. His concerns have echoed through the centuries, despite a world in which national borders seem to be blurring or even disappearing. In today’s global community, Russians and Americans are working together in space, such international organizations as the United Nations and NATO are expanding their membership, and corporations are crossing national boundaries to create global mergers in an international marketplace. Moreover, technological break-throughs, such as the Internet, have made international communications not only possible but commonplace. However, for most Americans, these international conversations are feasible only if the other side speaks English. In this new international era, Americans find themselves locked in a monolingual society. How strange that, instead of viewing those who speak other languages as welcome assets to our nation, some seem eager to erase linguistic diversity. [br] The students of Portuguese and Spanish origins are called ______.
选项
答案 Hispanic students
解析 本题信息在倒数第四段第一句“Opponents of bilingual education…‘English only’ classes”。“Hispanic”意为：西班牙和葡萄牙后裔的。
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