[lg policy] New White House Policy Promotes Ethnic Separation—Congress Should Reject It

Thu Jun 9 15:03:37 UTC 2016

New White House Policy Promotes Ethnic Separation—Congress Should Reject It

By Mike Gonzalez <http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/g/mike-gonzalez>
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#>
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#>
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#>
<http://thf-reports.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/IB4572.pdf>
About the Author

Mike Gonzalez <http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/g/mike-gonzalez>
*Senior FellowThe Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National
Security and Foreign Policy*

The Obama Administration last week unveiled new federal policy
recommendations[1]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn1>
that instruct states to support and encourage children to retain separate
languages and cultural attachments. The policy was included in a joint
policy statement[2]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn2>
by the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services (HHS). The
Administration stresses that these are mere recommendations that “do not
confer any legal obligations,” but notes that failure to implement them may
result in the loss of federal dollars.

The statements observe that there exists a “stubborn achievement gap”
between dual-language learners (DLLs) and their monolingual counterparts.[3]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn3>
The former are “behind their peers” in kindergarten, and experience “higher
high school and college drop-out rates.” However, the Administration cites
“a growing body of research,” which it says indicates that multilingualism
confers all sorts of “cognitive and social advantages.” The reason for the
mismatch between the promised potential in the cited studies and the
observed facts on the ground is due to “the quality of experience [the DLL
children] are *currently receiving*,” it says. “Not recognizing children’s
cultures and languages as assets may also play a role in the achievement
gap” because of the “low social prestige of minority languages,” say the
statements.

The Administration maintains that the solution is to preserve these
differences and recommends that early childhood programs nurture the
“cultural and linguistic assets of this population of children.” It advises
that states follow this path by such approaches as creating curricula and
educational early childhood systems that “support children’s home language
development” as well as English, employing credentialed bilingual staff,
and communicating with the family in their primary language. Kindergarten
entry assessments must be “culturally appropriate” and administered by
professionals who speak the children’s home language. To ensure that
teachers are “linguistically and culturally responsive” the states are
urged to collaborate with Hispanic-serving institutions, or universities
that serve immigrants and their children. Tolerance of and respect for
cultural differences is not enough, say the recommendations. Early
childhood programs must “embrace and celebrate their diversity.”

The Administration identifies four types of classroom models: (1) Dual
immersion, (2) native language with English support, (3) English with
native-language support, and (4) English only. The Administration
encourages No. 2 as “the most feasible in programs where most of the DLLs
in a program speak a common language at home,” and discourages No. 4
because “DLLs are less likely to receive the benefits discussed above.” It
cited as reasons for action high numbers of immigrants and a globalized
world. “The growing diversity of our nation’s children requires that we
shift the status quo.”
*Problems *

There are several problems with the Administration’s actions. Policy
statements of this sort raise generalized concerns because they risk being
coercive, and intrude into areas of primary state and local jurisdiction.

The Administration has no authority under the federal statutes governing
education, such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the
implementing regulations, to require bilingual education or retention of
“cultural assets.” Schools do have an obligation to teach English to
students with limited English proficiency, but there is no requirement that
they also be taught in their original home language. The Administration’s
arguments are also commonplace contentions trotted out to support
multicultural policies in general.

The United States is no stranger to immigration, and saw higher numbers of
foreign-born in past centuries, but always dealt with it in a way that was
more inclusive than what the administration proposes today: it encouraged
immigrants to feel as though they were natives. With this initiative, the
President moves the country further still away from the Founders’ vision of *E
Pluribus Unum*, their concept that out of many peoples would emerge a new
unified nation with one national identity.

That vision that immigrants were welcome but were expected to assimilate
was applied by American leaders at every level, especially at the school
house, where minds are formed and affections kindled. The elites, however,
began to reverse this vision and instituted the opposite policy of
perpetuating ethnic differences—the multicultural approach the
Administration furthers with this policy statement.

The Administration relies heavily on research on the advantages conferred
on the brain by learning more than one language from birth, while
stubbornly ignoring the comparative poor performance of DLLs cited by its
own reports. Numerous studies indicate that it is English proficiency that
is strongly correlated with education, higher income, and assimilation.[4]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn4>

More troubling, it disregards a whole field of academic research that
points to the dangers of stratifying nations along ethnic lines. It
lectures Americans that “over half the world’s population is estimated to
be bilingual or multilingual,” but says nothing of evidence that linguistic
fractionalization leads to lower economic and cultural indicators, never
mind the dangers of ethnic strife.

The President is also rejecting liberal thinking over three centuries that
has posited that ethnic and linguistic divisions bode ill for countries.
More than a century ago, the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill warned
that

free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different
nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they
read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to
the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences
which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the
different sections of the country.[5]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn5>

Closer to home, in 1991, the historian and eminent public intellectual
Arthur Schlesinger, also a liberal, asked, “In the century darkly ahead,
civilization faces a critical question: *What is it that holds a nation
together?*” Schlesinger answered himself: “If separatist tendencies go on
unchecked, the result can only be the fragmentation, resegregation, and
tribalization of American life.”[6]
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/06/new-white-house-policy-promotes-ethnic-separationcongress-should-reject-it#_ftn6>
*Actions for Congress *

Congress should:

   - *Call congressional hearings to probe the Administration’s actions.*
   Congress has a role to play in preventing the resegregation of the country,
   to use Schlesinger’s term. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor
   and Pensions and the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and
   Workforce, as well as the relevant subcommittees that oversee education,
   bilingualism, and diversity should take a direct interest in the
   Administration’s recommendations.
   - *Ask congressional committees to clarify that states will not be
   penalized. *Clarify (through statutory or report language) that states
   will not lose federal funding if they do not implement these
   recommendations. Clarify (through statutory or report language) that the
   federal government cannot mandate multilingual-education standards to
   states.

*Conclusion *

The Administration’s recommendation risks deepening cleavages in American
society by perpetuating cultural splits. Its proposed action would not help
promote the linguistic skill most highly correlated with success and
assimilation in the U.S.: English-language proficiency.

-- 
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