Prior to the Bilingual Education Acts
Prior to the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, the U.S. government had a change in attitude towards bilingualism and bilingual educations. At times, there was this permissive attitude that allowed teaching through the mother tongue acceptable. As long as it was within the jurisdiction of local towns and districts, schools were allowed to teach in the child’s native language. However, there were times in which higher authorities were strongly against languages other than the English. This hostile climate would culminate in the some of the nation’s most drastic changes in the public schools resulting in the reduction of any type of bilingual instruction offered by some states (Nieto, 2009). The …show more content…
Nebraska (1923) was a case concerning an educator at a private elementary school that thought a 10-year-old child a Bible story in German. Although the teacher was seen conduction these classes outside of school hours he was charged for teaching a langue that at the time was seen unacceptable. The Nebraska Supreme court ruled that teaching in the mother tongue would only cultivate ideas that were not to the best interest of the country. In 1923 the Supreme Court ruled that the Nebraska state law that banned the teaching of foreign languages to children was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment (Baker, 2011). This ruling provide many immigrant families the opportunity to teach their children the after school hours their native …show more content…
Board of Education of 1954 is known for desegregating public schools in the U.S. It was the 1st major educational policy. It allowed equal treatment in any form or way for any individual at a public school or any other public institutions. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that in any public school “in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal had no place” (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954). The Court’s decision created not just desegregation strategies, but also instructional approaches such as Title I programs and bilingual and multicultural education that would later benefit the minority groups such as the Mexican-American (Contreras & Valverde,