The Officlal Language

With the large population of Spanish speaking people in American, questions about the feasibility of Bilingualism in both education and politics has become a major issue in our country. “Bilingualism is the use of two or more languages in places of work or educational facilities, according each language equal legitimacy.”   (Schafer, 2006 pg 242) In terms of education, what it means is that should we have schools teaching lessons in more than one language, so that children who may not speak English are learning lessons in their native tongue while at the same time learning English? Although in a perfect world, the English speaking students would ideally be learning a second language as well but this usually isn’t the case. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. Bilingualism doesn’t just affect the Educational world; there are also issues with it in the Political world. The question is whether ethnical political issues, from multi–lingual ballots to ethnic minority policies should be front and center in the political region.
To further learn about these issues I studied several articles on the subject. The first was an article on Education.com called “Bilingual Education Attacked.” This article written by D.E. Campbell looks at the destruction of the bilingualism educational movement in America. From the passing of California’s Proposition 227, which made it illegal in California to teach instructional courses in any language other than English, to expiration of the Bilingual Education Act, it seems that there is a large portion of the population who fear bilingual learning. The article points out that opponents of bilingual education attempt to create a sense of fear that teaching in more than one language will give minorities an unfair advantage and that it must be stopped to preserve American Culture and a sense of American unity. The author feels that decades of attempting bilingual education has ended and the...