Bilingual Education in US

Introduction

Teaching bilingual and multicultural contexts is one of the biggest challenges for modern societies. The intensity of migration and the extent of the media make it increasingly easy contact with other languages ??and cultures. Furthermore, the guidelines of socio-economic globalization and the increasing uniformity of the information society, have their counterpart in localist movements and in defending the same, compared to the more general. In this situation, takes a great interest to know how teaching echoes the new models of society and the treatment given to the languages ??of the community members and their respective cultures of origin(Meier, 1991).

Discussion

Favor of Bilingual education

In common usage, bilingual education has come to refer to, in most cases, what more accurately would be called transitional bilingual education (TBE). The official purpose of TBE programs is essentially remedial: to provide home-language support for pupils whose first language is not English so that they can continue to study academic subjects while acquiring proficiency in English. It should be distinguished from two-way bilingual programs that bring together pupils, whose home languages differ, for instruction in which both languages are used so that students can learn, in part, from each other. A variety of rationales have been advanced for TBE. One is that study of other subjects should not be on hold until pupils have become sufficiently proficient in English. Another is based on linguistic theory that literacy and other academic skills should be acquired first in the home language and will then transfer more efficiently to a second language than if instruction had been in the latter from the start. Yet another is that the self-concept of members of an ethnic minority group depends upon academic validation of the language associated with that group, even if the individual has not learned it at home (Hakuta, 1986).

Bilingual education is a widespread practice and very old, dating back at least to ancient Rome. In the case of the United States, his debut match those of the American school because of the colonial era in the early twentieth century, each community schooling her children in their own institutions, and linguistic minorities chose to perpetuate the use their languages ??through school. The example of the Germans in the Midwest illustrates this principle, but it also reveals the first paradox of bilingual education in the United States. Indeed, after the First World War, this method was the subject of a ...