Bilingual Education research

[ANNE V. GILBERT]

Rudy:

> There IS a lot of research on bilingual education (I've directed several
> dissertations on it), which is consistently ignored in all of the debate
> and legislative moves because it is more convenient to operate on
> anecdotal and visceral bases. Virtually none of the public debate pays any
> attention to the available research (there is a national organization of
> bilingual educators, and the Journal of Bilingual Research which they
> sponsor). Some years ago, when I was interviewed by Time for a story on
> bilingual education, a whole column of the story containing my discussion
> was deleted by an editor somewhere between Friday night when the wording
> was confirmed by phone and Monday when it appeared. The only part of my
> truncated interview that was left was my statement that it takes 5 to 6
> years to gain competence in academic English, to which the editorial
> question was posed, "Can we afford to wait that long?"

If it's any comfort to you, this is typical of the way news media often
operate, which is one reason why so many people get a distorted idea of
events and issues.  IOW, they want to sell newsprint or air time.

>         The depth of popular xenophobia toward other languages was brought
> home to me one day when in a cafeteria line I heard a woman behind me, who
> was evidently a waitress in a local cafe, proudly telling her friends that
> she had told a table of customers "jabbering in some other language" that
> she would not serve them unless they spoke English.

This is precisely the attitude I've encountered among "English only"
supporters, often people who should know better.  And this was precisely the
attitude I was talking about with the woman who criticized the woman from
the HOrn of Africa who just didn't have quite the vocabulary to ask where
what she wanted was located.  It's very sad.

>         When Chinese becomes the dominant economic language of the world
> in the future, will we be prepared?

Who knows?
Anne G