The thread has some particularly good exchanges towards the end...

David Horowitz and his Call for Abandoning Bilingual Education

Horowitz on abololishing bilingual education

Jenn Shreve - 11:24am Aug 1, 1997 PST
Assistant editor, Salon

In his Aug. 4 column, David Horowitz discusses the "English Language Education for Immigrant Children Initiative," which proposes to end bilingual education. Horowitz supports the immersion method, where non-English speaking children learn English by being placed immediately in an all-English classroom. Do you support bilingual education? Or do you believe, as Horowitz does, that it is doing more harm than good to immigrant children?

NOTE: The above link will work after 6 p.m. PDT, Sunday, Aug. 4.

I don't generally engage in grammar flaming, but I think we should "abololish" misspellings in the titles of education-related threads!

I also do not know why it is necessary to have a new thread to discuss the topic in question, when a perfectly serviceable one exists ("Multilingualism...") In any case, I have not found Mr. Horowitz to have provided much useful information on educational issues in the past.

Nice display of open-mindedness Anthony. The column hasn't even been posted yet.

pot, kettle, black.

You see, the regular posters aren't capable of initiating a thread as well as Jenn, who apparently isn't even reading TableTalk....serious intellectual dedication, yes.

Obviously this is another cheap trick to promote that Salon bad boy and cutting edge dude, David Horowitz.

Dis is getting pukey!

When Mr. Horowitz offers his perspective, I'm sure we will all benefit from reading it. I have no idea why an edditer wouldn't use a spell checker, but having been attacked by people who subsitute the ability to locate a misspelled word to the ability to state a cogent argument, my natural sympathies align with the editor.

While we're waiting for the article to get here, I'd like to second the concern expressed over the duplication of threads - especially since the same two dozen people (at the outside) show up in all of them. A single thread in each topical area would allow us to see all of the repetitions of each other's opinions more easily, and require less retyping and cross-posting. (Of course, at the cost of missing a witty reply to the ever-popular "Does Deion Sanders Communicate Gang Symbols Through the Angle of his Baseball Cap?")

As for bilingual education, I'm in favor of it - not the non-bi, non-educational system that is favored now by political advocacy groups interested in exploiting group-think to the advantage of their agenda - but the real thing. Take the English speakers and teach them in nothing but Spanish. Take the Spanish speakers and teach them in nothing but English. They'd all be bilingual by Christmas.

Is it a lack of open-mindedness to have read someones work, requested and read their publications, engaged in repeated attempts at civil discussion, and then retire, after having been repeatedly attacked? That has been my experience with you, Mr. Horowitz. I don't think I lack openmindedness. Merely the inclination to waste more time.

Actually, I appreciate Mr. Horowitz's willingness to engage the TT participants on their own terms - he is certainly attacked many times more often than he attacks. While I wish that he would demonstrate a more civilized way to respond than in kind, the man is busy and I'm sure that, unlike the permanently twisted Mr. Carville, his resorts to occasional crudities are something that he is capable of raising above.

Well, I am one who tried, but failed, to go "higher" with Mr. Horowitz on the subject of education.

Bilingual education is the latest target for the right, as they have beat affirmative action to death, illegal immigrants, and so on. Anyone else see a pattern here?

Anthony says: Bilingual education is the latest target for the right, as they have beat affirmative action to death,illegal immigrants, and so on. Anyone else see a pattern here?

Gee - you don't suppose that just maybe it's 'cause we're RIGHT do ya'?

Why is this a political issue anyway? All of the topics mentioned here by Anthony are issues that revolve around doing something in a reasonable, logical, and CORRECT manner that will redound to the benefit of the subjects. This apparently is something that totally revolts the amateur proponents of political correctness. It is more important to do things that 'feel good' than to do those things in a manner that adds value to our society.

WOW!!!

As I said before, I am discussing bilingual education in the Multilingualism thread.
Bilingual education is the latest target for the right, as they have beat affirmative action to death, illegal immigrants, and so on. Anyone else see a pattern here?

John Horowitz - 12:23pm Aug 2, 1997 PST (#10 of 44)
Earth First.... we'll strip-mine the other planets later!

Anthony says: Bilingual education is the latest target for the right, as they have beat affirmative action to death,illegal immigrants, and so on. Anyone else see a pattern here?

Gee - you don't suppose that just maybe it's 'cause we're RIGHT do ya'?

Why is this a political issue anyway? All of the topics mentioned here by Anthony are issues that revolve around doing something in a reasonable, logical, and CORRECT manner that will redound to the benefit of the subjects. This apparently is something that totally revolts the amateur proponents of political correctness. It is more important to do things that 'feel good' than to do those things in a manner that adds value to our society.

WOW!!!

Anthony Cody - 04:19pm Aug 2, 1997 PST (#11 of 44)
On the road to Alta Mira

Sez you.

(Deleted item originally posted by Brian Sponsler on 05:14pm Aug 2, 1997 PST)

Anthony Cody - 07:48pm Aug 2, 1997 PST (#13 of 44)
On the road to Alta Mira

As I said before, I am discussing bilingual education in the Multilingualism thread.

Brian Sponsler - 10:22pm Aug 2, 1997 PST (#14 of 44)

If the US Federal government funded school vouchers usable at both public and private schools then parentscould decide whether their children were to be involved in bi-lingual education. That to me would be a step in the right direction.

If we start teaching these children English, who will we get to pick oranges for slave wages? Don't knock the liberals who support these programs. They KNOW exactly what they're doing...

The price for those cheap oranges is way too high.

Bilingual programs frequently turn into little more than in-house segregation. When I went to my upper-middle-class public junior high (this would be six years ago), "bilingual" was a synonum for Hispanic. I (daughter of an immigrant myself) never met or knew the names of any of the kids in the bilingual program. How could I have? Their timetable was so different they didn't even take music or woodshop classes with the English speaking kids. Bilingual programs seem to make sense for the first year of learning English, but after that transition, I vote for immersion and integration.

But it isn't AND shouldn't be a matter of voting! Bilingual education is just WRONG! And it doesn't work.

ESOL (teaching English as a Second Language) does work. It also works at different speeds for different kids. One year is enough for some, too little for others.

JH's broadside is another superficial diatribe on a politically trendy target. Shallowness is true to Horowitz's form, and perhaps inevitable in the 2Kword essay format. But he stoops to new lows in this one.

As a parent of a grade school child I did many hours of research on bilingual education. I was lucky enough to have a choice of public schools with varying programs -- including a bilingual program. I can tell you that there are many flavors of bilingual education and that most of them do not fit the profile portrayed in John's hit piece. The one we nearly opted for was a Spanish immersion program that started with %100 of the instruction in Spanish in kindergarten and transitioned to 50-50 English-Spanish by 5^th grade with an emphasis on English literacy and preparation for a lifetime of English-only instruction. Most of the programs I researched were designed as limited term programs aimed at preparing students for English instruction. On the international front, most programs prepare the minority speaker for ongoing education in the majority tongue. These programs offer the best results for minority speakers' future academic achievement -- and they provide a means for early language acquisition for majority speakers. That was my interest. Very few of the California programs were Spanish-only and I heard of none that were mandatory, unavoidable programs in neighborhood schools. In northern California, the norm for native Spanish speakers in immersion English instruction, and the improved performance of those that have access to bilingual programs is well established. But the demagogues foisting the simpleton, fascistic initiative on the general public have no interest in considering the wealth of professional research on the topic. Too bad, we stand to loose many valuable school programs and further degrade public education should the initiative succeed.

Research? This ain't research, this is the rice bowl polisher telling you why the rice bowl is critical to the future of humanity.

KC, you seem confused about the topic here. We are speaking of public education for children who currently do not speak or read English. NOT about foreign language immersion for English-speaking children. Go away and confuse the naive and easily-led elsewhere please.

Richard Geib - 01:11pm Aug 4, 1997 PST (#22 of 44)
I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud?

I used to teach right near that school near downtown Los Angeles where the parents protested bilingual education and I can tell you that bilingual education is an utter failure. However, I don't believe this has anything to do with curriculum or the policies of school districts or anything so exotic or abstract. It has to do with children whose parents hardly know how to read and write themselves and whom all too often have shallow academic aspirations for their children. It has to do with very poor Spanish-speaking children going to school with other very poor Spanish-speaking children with hardly a middle-class English speaking influence other than teachers for miles in any direction. You take the average immigrant child from Michoacan or Oaxaca and put them in such an environment, you all too often end up with a verbal SAT score of 298 - which was the average at Belmont High School near downtown LA. You take a child of educated parents from Mexico and put them in an middle class American school, and they will adapt and do well. In my experience, it is not the language (or money or curriculum) but the attitudes of everyone involved which is so important. In my experience, that is also why the Asian students do so much better (their parents will often kill them if they bring home a "B"!). Anyone interested in more can check out my time teaching near beautiful downtown LA.

I wonder about Mr. Horowitz talking about an issue he most likely has no experience with. Does he want to give the "progressive" educators on the Left a black eye or does he really want to roll up his sleeves and make things better? Now I consider "progressive" education a total disaster, but I get the feeling all this about bilingual education will be simply another pissy-fit over education between the left and the right while the children continue to suffer. Makes me sad to be a teacher in America.

So JH, where is your research? Where are your facts? The article is remarkably free of them. Seems to me Richard is correct to wonder what your credentials are on this issue.

I'm well aware that the primary goal of bilingual education is not to teach language skills to majority speakers. But it is a bona fide benefit for many students. BTW, bilingual education is not just for non-English speakers, nor LEP (limited English). The target communities are as varied as the programs themselves, if not more so.

Bi-Lingual education is a sham and a shame on the American education system. I have been a teacher for 10 years, in San Antonio, Texas and now here in Pasco, Washington. Our student population is over 50% Hispanic, and we have a very large ESL, LEP, SET population. Most of the students in these programs were born in this country. In many cases, their parents were born here also. Yet we continue to teach them in Spanish, read the morning announcements in Spanish, and translate every mailing that goes home into Spanish. It is a huge waste of money, energy and time. The Bi-Lingual classes are smaller and nowhere near as academically demanding as mainstream classes. If a student wants to get into one of the classes, he just has to take (and do poorly on) a standardized test. Then he can be in a small class with all of his friends, with a lot of individual attention. Hey, where can I sign up? That's what we all wanted in school, and these kids are getting it handed to them. We have students in Bi-Lingual programs who have been in them for 5 or more years. I am all for a program of immersion. Place the students in a program where they learn English and then put them into the mainstream population of the school. As it is now, they wallow in Bi-Lingual programs for years, falling further and further behind.

When the Spanish came here and murdered and raped the natives, the children of these unions have a right to speak the language of their betters who conquered them.

Richard, what would you like to teach them - Nahuatl?

[a quick quiz: name three English words that came from Nahuatl]

Avocado, tomato, peyote, coyote, chocolate, chili, axolotl, cacao, ocelot and many more.

I find it amusing, but not surprising that the minute someone comes on this thread with authority and experience (I'm speaking of Brian) that confirms the oh so politically incorrect conclusions of the nefarious right, the left just abandons the field. This why I left the left. A lot of noble sounding abstractions, a lot of concrete crimes against the very people they claim to defend. The worst enemy of illegal immigrants, poor blacks, and Spanish speaking Americans is the progressive left. Why don't you people get off their backs?

I am what some people would call a "left leaning liberal." I was born in 1921; grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930's; and came from a family that "adored" (that is too mild a word) Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

My immigrant mother had an American flag and a big picture of FDR on the wall near the basement washing machine. My immigrant father was a "socialist" of sorts.

Now that I have established my credentials, let me also weigh in with the view that "bilingual education" must be viewed as a failure.

The fact appears to be that Spanish speaking people in southern California form a critical mass--which means that one can bank, buy groceries, gas up the car and do errands while speaking Spanish. But that ease also keeps many Spanish speaking youngsters who feel comfortable with the use of Spanish and little English in a ghetto of sorts and doomed to a life of low paying jobs with hardly a future.

I know that personal anecdotes do not prove anything, and yet--I represented (as a Lawyer) a manufacturer of industrial conveyor belts who had sold the parts to a contractor who then installed it in the basement of the Los Angeles Times where a young Mexican-American worker got his hands caught in the conveyor belt and brought an action against one and all, including my client, for providing an inherently unsafe device. The point is that I had to take the depositions of the young plaintiff and some of his co-workers who were also young Mexican-Americans.

It turned out that most of these young men had been born in the US, had gone to school in L.A. and had been graduated from Garfield High School in E. Los Angeles; yet each one of them at the deposition demanded to have the use of a Spanish speaking interpreter who would translate my questions into Spanish; have their answers made in Spanish; and then translated by the interpreter into English.

When I questioned the use of such a cumbersome method of questions and answers at the deposition, especially since one or more of the deponents had been educated in the L. A. school system, I was called a "bigot" and other nasty names.

I had never before been made aware of how the use of Spanish still remained the pervasive language of choice among a critical mass of people living in the U.S. who could conduct virtually their entire lives without knowing English well; and I wondered, as well, how young men could be graduated from a Los Angeles High School and still claim such a tenuous ability to understand and speak the English languauge.

David: I might agree with you about the "progressive" liberals being the worst enemies of the underclass, but I have a hard time agreeing that they have any better an ally in the conservative right. I know many many conservative Republicans here in Orange County, CA, who could care less about what happens to the "illegal immigrants, poor blacks, and Spanish speaking Americans." (Let them eat cake!) If education is turning into a joke in this country, I don't think the right is very sincere in making a serious commitment to changing things for the better.

I have read your books with a keen eye as a long time hater of the sophmorism of the New Left and the 60s, but I wonder if you do not serve America better in rising above partisan differences to reach for the truth. The decline in power of the left does not a priori equal a better America. Maybe you would better serve this argument by arguing a comprehensive view of what education should be in America rather than simply complain about what is wrong. Such, after all, was the standard tactic of the New Left in the 60s: the South Vietnamese gov't is a cruel joke, ergo the North Vietnamese must be heroes. It is more complex than that.

Jenn Shreve says,

<Horowitz supports the immersion method, where non-English speaking children learn English by being placed immediately in an all-English classroom.

Look in many inner city schools today: Where will you find an "All-English clasroom?" If immersion is to work, it can only work when there is a critical mass of English-speaking kids.

My question was directed at Richard Pascarelli.

Good posts, Richard Geib. That's what Internet is best for - unfiltered experiences of people from all walks of life.

What do you think of my posts over in the English King thread (which was forked over from the end of the Cyrus Noe thread) ?

bullshit...Richard G. won this one. Horowitz writes like a product pitchman. A little light was shed here, almost by accident. Make a few calls in your own city. Find out how ESL kids are taught there. You guys can't do diddley about L.A.

Interesting.

BS, but interesting.

This debate is another example of marginizing one population because of the perception of eroding resources.

The fact is that California cared about all of our kids, they would be investing in education above a scandalous level---and not nitpicking over disputes between Anglo teachers whining over Hispanic cliques or scapgoating kids whose parents are now the boogiemen of urban myth.

Get real, ladies and gents---our schools are falling apart, kids are losing out....and using racist code words to play on the fears of middle class people who are afraid of plunging property values is evil.

Actually it is scandal that we live in a world where we must have everyone speak English....because nobody bothers to understand or have workable programs shows us how the capacity for language is acquired....

And we don't have the will to stop bickering over turf.

The is nothing wrong with the schools that would not be helped by throwing money at it.

Unless you are aware that the lobbying group in California with the most clout is THE PRISON GUARDS UNION, YOU NINNIES!

As for you David, you are so utterly predictable, you might as well have a computer write your columns. At least computers can be programmed for style.

Thank you, John. I do support the immersion method and also choice in education. Breaking the monopoly of the leftwing teachers unions who constitute the chief obstacle to serious educational reform and who have sacrificed generations of minority and poor students to their liberal and radical political agendas, and who have a stake in keeping the poor mired in poverty is the key to real improvement in education.

Thank you Richard for a thoughtful post. I agree that many conservatives prefer to write off the inner city. But the only positive proposals for helping the inner city are those I see coming from conservatives. Also, since liberals and leftists have a stake in perpetuating the misery of minorities and the poor, and since they have the power still to do so, combatting the left is an indispensable part of liberating the oppressed.

My question to the teachers in our midst, are the bi-lingual programs in your schools the problem? Would abolition of bi-lingual programs, in and of itself, improve the schools and cause the affected students to excel?

My belief as a parent is that schools performance is a mix of many factors, and the educational philosophies and programs are but a small part. The home lives of the students, parental involvement and expectations, funding, facilities, class size, teachers' ability, testing, standards, administrative leadership and support,... are all interrelated and ultimately way more important than any mandate from voters or school district bureaucrats.

Of all these, the one that I think is most realistic to pursue on a policy level is testing and standards. I don't believes that standard testing is a panacea -- there are ample ways of perverting education in the name of standardized tests. But I am a firm believer in the use of tests to manage student performance. If, as in Richard's school, all the students are performing below grade, what the hell is a teacher supposed to do? It won't matter what language the students hear the subject matter in if they are ill prepared to assimilate it.

If someone is selling bi-lingual ed as a cure-all to under-performing barrio schools they should be ignored. But don't foster some counter-delusion that eliminating bi-lingual programs by fiat will fix the problem.

Nancy, I agree that California has for many years starved public schools to the point of collapse and that money is essential to fixing them. But I fear that throwing buckets of cash into the hopper -- which will be happening in the coming years -- is not enough. Essential, yes. Good news, of course. But it won't fix the structural problems of educational institutions. Again, I would like to hear from the teachers and in-school administrators about where they would allocate new funds. My fear is that they will be completely ignored in the current political environment -- as is witnessed by JH's malevolent scapegoating.

I'm interested in this topic for many reasons - but one that is meaningful to everybody interested in this topic, except the people in the 'ed-biz', is the level of taxation needed to provide useful schooling for the children of this society.

Throwing money at the problem is the stupid way out of the mess the schools are in now. It's stupid because spending more money on assinine answers to unasked questions helps no one, least of all the students. But, GEE, it helps the 'ed-biz' folks, the school administrators with whom we are currently overwhelmed.

The way to discern the proper path to a useful future is fairly simplistic: just as in any sport- keep your eye upon the ball and upon the goal.

In other words, check the outcomes.

If the local high school grads can't add or subtract, or make change when they're cashiers, the math curriculum stinks.

If they can't read the want ads or write a simple paragraph explaining their training and education, the English curriculum stinks.

If they can't do numbers, if they can't read, then YOU as a taxpayer are being HOSED.

Is that simple enough for you?

Actually it is scandal that we live in a world where we must have everyone speak English

Nancy: My school with over 95% of the students qualifying for Title I (federal poverty) funds had lots and lots of money. I am not sure if you have ever taught in a ghetto school (or attended one), but I wonder if you even have the slightest idea what it is like. To stand back and blame society for the mess of the schools is hard to argue with; but the way in which you do it makes you appear the pontificating radical vanguard which partially got us into this mess in the first place with "progressive" education.

KC Jones, in my opinion and experience, has obviously spoken well to the complexity of the problem. Yet what we need more than any infusion of money is a change of attitude - simply throwing good money after the bad has never worked before and I have no idea why it would work now. Attitudes need to change.

Think about this: A noted Polish-American teacher came to talk at our school once and he told us that in the nine different countries in which he had taught only in the United States when a child flunks a test does he/she blame anyone but him/herself. My students from Mexico were by and large much better behaved than the American students - in fact, I could measurably see them deteriorate as they became "Americanized" and start listening to rap music, pick up the culture of the streets, etc. I taught with a Mexican teacher and he had nothing but contempt for the lack of respect for teachers (and authority in general) in American schools.

Many teachers actually gravitated towards the ESL classes because the kids still had that Latino respect for teachers. The kids might not have been the best prepared academically, but they didn't give you the middle finger constantly like so many regular English students. Although I don't think she has any direct experience, Nancy seems confident in being able to descant liberally and to diagnose the problem perfectly.

I reminded my friend the teacher from Mexico that he was seeing only some of the worst schools in the whole country, yet I know he has a valid point. There is a sickness in the United States that goes straight to the soul of the country and no amount of money by itself is going to change that. It is not nearly so easy. My buddy Francisco and I might be from different countries, but we both agreed exactly that attitude is the first and foremost problem in the LA schools. Hell, you can learn in a drugstore if you really want to - there are books there! Francisco was telling me the conditions at our school with textbooks, supplies, teachers, etc. are ten times better than in Mexico and still people learn more in his country (again because of attitude).

And I think the subtle attitude of "everything is crap in this screwed up country" by Nancy is precisely the problem ("and using racist code words to play on the fears of middle class people... a scandal that we live in a world where we must have everyone speak English...The is nothing wrong with the schools that would not be helped by throwing money at it... GUARDS UNION, YOU NINNIES!"). No matter the lack of nuance that he might suffer today, at least Mr. Horowitz had the courage to shed such facile thinking not too long after the 60s had concluded.

I get the feeling Nancy in her youth most probably was one of those spoiled and loud American students my friend from Mexico was complaining about in his classes in Los Angeles. And from her attitude, it seems she still has not grown up. Since I am only basing such this on a few comments of hers, I could be mistaken. But I doubt it.

Let's hear more comments like those of KC Jones which actually make sense and are constructive. If Nancy wants to call people "ninnies" and this discussion "bullshit," let her go to the IRC where such thing is commonplace.

But, then what do I know?

The parents aren't at home. They're at work, or in the TV. Kids are a nuisance that women make men have.

We are in deep doo-doo in the United States. When someone finally gets to the stage of saying, "What is wrong?" it is time to tell the truth: we are now a rich imperial country whose legions, the multinational corporations, are bringing us every THING we could want, but they have no commission to bring us wisdom or understanding. We have set these mechanical corporate beasts into motion, and now they are out of control. Likely our country will crash, and in crashing, bring on a great interregnum, in which great fears and hatreds will be commonplace.

Unless some critical mass of citizens keeps reading and thinking and slashing through the bullshit, and thinking of the futures of their children as hard as they can. This effort to think clearly will be hard, and there will be many clever coopted people trying to convince us that we are wrong, and that OUR system will save the world.

It won't, and the proof is the attitude of our children. Let's hear it, David, how will we change the attitude of the children?

Henry: You have just spoken more common sense than I ever heard in the two years of education classes I suffered through. I suggest we fire the education professors and bring in the old wisened ones.

My answer to Ormond's question: turn off the TV. Others' mileage may vary.