In America, bilingual education is considered to be a controversial topic. Bilingual education can be anything from classroom instruction for those that have a native language other than English to secondary language classes in school. Making Bilingual Education mandatory in schools would be a great benefit to our society. Adding bilingual classes to the curriculum not only puts children at an advantage of different learning styles, but they become more culturally involved and they become a high demand in the workplace. According to various recent professional studies, another benefit to adding multiple languages to the school’s course curriculum would be that the cognitive skills of the students would be increased tremendously.
There is …show more content…
Since this has become political some facts have been dismissed as irrelevant. Knowing two languages has many benefits a few being that “...bilingualism is associated with cognitive benefits such as increased control over attention, improved working memory, greater awareness of the structure and form of language, and better abstract and symbolic representation skills” (qtd in Goldenberg and Wagner 23). These benefits encourage different learning styles for children, which enables them to transition in a timely fashion to the English speaking population part of school. Not many people know that bilingualism can offer these cognitive benefits besides high demand for people in the workplace who can offer this skill. Another cognitive benefits is research has shown that there are delays on the onset of Dementia (qtd in Goldenberg, and Wagner 24) This evidence may sway people reconsider bilingual education because of the mental delays they can obtain. For many reasons, bilingual education is misinterpreted within the world because people believe that somehow encouraging multiple language will disengage people from America (qtd in Goldenberg and Wagner (20). However, the ignorance for some to argue that having bilingual education classes will somehow make people disregard the English language as whole is …show more content…
Another interesting fact to know is that German amongst other languages were part of the curriculum up until the World War I (Lerner 2) After World War I majority of the bilingual education classes faded away and any that spoke another language was looked as if they were “disloyal” (Lerner 5). Fascinating to find that other languages were incorporated and just a quick switch in everything and people beaome un-American. Eventually, society pressured the government of the unfairness that non-English speaking people were receiving, which resulted in the Lau vs. Nichols decision it states--- “schools are obligated to take sufficient steps to assist non-English-speaking students to overcome linguistic barriers in the classroom” (Lerner 7). Lau vs. Nichols was followed by the 1998 Unz resolution is California this event is better known for replacing bilingual education with all English instruction. No Child Left Behind followed the Lau vs. Nichols Act which gave children a 3 year window to get instruction in their language and after that 3 year window they would receive all testing in English instruction. However, it is not easy to decipher if this law had a positive impact or negative impact because it is hard to base conclusions off of state data. (Goldenberg and Wagner 14). But, in our current time period
There is …show more content…
Since this has become political some facts have been dismissed as irrelevant. Knowing two languages has many benefits a few being that “...bilingualism is associated with cognitive benefits such as increased control over attention, improved working memory, greater awareness of the structure and form of language, and better abstract and symbolic representation skills” (qtd in Goldenberg and Wagner 23). These benefits encourage different learning styles for children, which enables them to transition in a timely fashion to the English speaking population part of school. Not many people know that bilingualism can offer these cognitive benefits besides high demand for people in the workplace who can offer this skill. Another cognitive benefits is research has shown that there are delays on the onset of Dementia (qtd in Goldenberg, and Wagner 24) This evidence may sway people reconsider bilingual education because of the mental delays they can obtain. For many reasons, bilingual education is misinterpreted within the world because people believe that somehow encouraging multiple language will disengage people from America (qtd in Goldenberg and Wagner (20). However, the ignorance for some to argue that having bilingual education classes will somehow make people disregard the English language as whole is …show more content…
Another interesting fact to know is that German amongst other languages were part of the curriculum up until the World War I (Lerner 2) After World War I majority of the bilingual education classes faded away and any that spoke another language was looked as if they were “disloyal” (Lerner 5). Fascinating to find that other languages were incorporated and just a quick switch in everything and people beaome un-American. Eventually, society pressured the government of the unfairness that non-English speaking people were receiving, which resulted in the Lau vs. Nichols decision it states--- “schools are obligated to take sufficient steps to assist non-English-speaking students to overcome linguistic barriers in the classroom” (Lerner 7). Lau vs. Nichols was followed by the 1998 Unz resolution is California this event is better known for replacing bilingual education with all English instruction. No Child Left Behind followed the Lau vs. Nichols Act which gave children a 3 year window to get instruction in their language and after that 3 year window they would receive all testing in English instruction. However, it is not easy to decipher if this law had a positive impact or negative impact because it is hard to base conclusions off of state data. (Goldenberg and Wagner 14). But, in our current time period