Dean Dad recently experienced a forehead-slapping moment about bilingual education:

In the last few weeks, two of the biggest, most respected and sought after employers in our service area told me, independently and without prompting, that they desperately want bilingual employees. In the fields the employers represent, the ability to communicate with the population that actually exists is hugely important, and they’ve had a terrible time finding bilingual workers with the skills they want.

We teach a substantial (and growing) bilingual population, of course, but I realized just now that we’re doing it wrong.

Our entire ESL/Bilingual framework is built on the assumption that ESL status is an obstacle or a handicap. The unstated goal has been to ‘catch up’ the ESL population to the rest of the students. Accordingly, we have all manner of ‘bridge’ programs, tutoring, ‘outreach,’ and the rest.

These are all good, as far as they go. To the extent that they help students from struggling high schools to develop the skills to succeed in college and eventual careers, I’m all for them. And you’ll never catch me saying bad things about tutoring, whether for this group or anybody else.

But the attitudes we convey, and messages we send, by treating ESL status as a handicap are backwards. In this market, fluency in two languages (English and Spanish, really) is a huge plus. It’s an asset. Given two similarly qualified candidates, one bilingual and the other not, both employers made it abundantly clear to me that they’d hire the bilingual one in a heartbeat. The ability to communicate with Spanish-speaking clients (or, more importantly, potential clients) is a major business advantage, and one for which they’re willing to pay. It’s worth something to them.

What makes Dean Dad's contemplations interesting at this point in time is that the approach he advocates is apparently antithetical to the 2008 Republican Platform (PDF) on education. The GOP platform emphasizes the importance of K-16 education on both the country's economic development and individual students' success in finding jobs by meeting employers' needs for 21st-century skills. Certainly speaking more than one language is a key skill. Many of the job ads I have seen lately--I read a lot of them because friends and family are always looking for better opportunities--require or encourage bilingualism, particularly in Spanish, although people who can speak Korean, Chinese, Russian, Farsi, or Arabic also appear to be in demand.

From the 2008 Republican platform:

To ensure that all students will have access to the mainstream of American life, we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students’ future potential. All students must be literate in English, our common language, to participate in the promise of America.

The liability of an English-first approach is that students' brains are most pliable and capable of learning multiple languages at younger ages. If we forbid the reading and writing of students' native languages in U.S. schools, we may be hurting those students more than we are helping them. When I was in the high school, there were a number of native Spanish speakers in my Spanish language classes. They knew how to speak colloquial Spanish, but needed to learn how to speak it correctly and how to write--even how to spell--their native tongue.

Similarly, my college students who are bilingual--usually in Spanish or in Asian languages--talk frequently with me about how they don't feel fully literate in either language because they learned only to write in English (and not too well) at school and to speak their first language (but only colloquially) at home. It's frustrating for them, and it's frustrating for me as an instructor.

Conservatives tend to respond to this dilemma by saying that English should take primacy because it is the national language of the country. But the reality is that students will continue to speak their native languages with older relatives and many of them speak their first languages with peers as well. Does this persistence of another language harm students' learning of English? Or would learning to speak and write two languages serve students as both learners and future professionals?

I share Dean Dad's perspective: Knowing--and especially being fluent in--two or more languages is a huge advantage, not a liability. Contrary to the implicit (half-explicit?) statement in the GOP platform that bilingual programs are "divisive" and to "ensure the transmission of a culture," bilingual education actually advances cultural transmission and promotes cross-culture understanding. Learning about--and experiencing--cultures in a comparative context is a tremendous way to better understand each culture. I wasn't even aware how cultural influenced my own (sometimes asinine, sometimes beneficial) beliefs about how the world works were until I started to study other languages and cultures. And by "cultures" I mean not only cultures beyond U.S. borders but rather--and primarily--the cultures of U.S. citizens, be they white people whose families have been here four generations but whose culture differs from my own, Latinos who are seventh-generation Californians, or recent immigrants from hither and yon.

In addition, the philosophy of bilingual education is, as the Foreign Language Doctor explains,

is that one can learn a foreign language better (in this case, English) is one is already literate in one’s native language. Such has been shown repeatedly by empirical research.

Philip left an interesting comment at Dean Dad's post--it effectively parries, I think, the belief that Spanish-speaking students shouldn't be offered classes on the Spanish language:

Q: Spanish classes for kids who grew up speaking Spanish? That's unnecessary/a waste of time/a dilution of standards/blah blah blah.

A: Then why do we require English classes for kids who grew up speaking English?

I do believe that all American students should become highly literate in English, but this literacy should not come at the expense of their own cultural and linguistic heritage. I get a sense that some people believe there was a historical moment where good, hard-working, God-fearing Americans were all literate in English. That's a fiction. The U.S. has always been home to people who are multilingual. Even my own grandmother, who was born here, spoke German and English growing up on her parents' farm. It saddens me that my father is monolingual, having failed first-year German at his community college three times. When children are taught only in English, there's a huge linguistic as well as cultural loss. Even though a large part of my cultural heritage is Germanic, I'm not sure I could accurately identify Germany on an unlabeled map of Europe, typical American that I am--and I have a Ph.D. in cultural studies.

Like many Americans, bloggers have fierce opinions about bilingual education.

Lady Readsalot seems to share my perspective on bilingualism:

Language and culture are woven together. If one goes, a person loses the other as well. For immigrants and refugees, this can be devastating. Not only has a person been dislocated, but they are expected to give up their language and usually their culture as well. Where does this leave the newcomer?

Mary Ann Zehr of Edweek wonders about this "English First" phrase (as opposed to "English only") in the Republican platform, and asks as well about the rhetorical shift in some conservative political circles from "cultural assimilation" to "cultural integration." Don't miss Zehr's other interesting post culling her readers' ideas about bilingual education.

Curmudgeon emphasizes the importance of learning English early--and implies that we probably don't need to learn other languages because English is being widely adopted as the international language of business and commerce:

Can we admit finally that the use of English is the biggest key to success in this country and that putting off the learning of English is more damaging to the future of a student than probably anything else? Can we understand that allowing a kid to get through high school without a clear command of English is essentially committing him to a life of only watching Telemundo and only getting jobs in businesses that cater exclusively to Hispanics - a vanishingly small portion of the job market.

TeacherNinja is tired of Republicans pointing out that English is this country's official language:

They do know that is just like the Tom Tomorrow cartoon that shows them designating the Sun as our source of heat and light, don't they?

Adelaide Chen points us to APA students who are in Mandarin or Korean immersion or half-immersion programs in San Francisco. It's an interesting article--definitely check it out.

To see one example of bilingual education in practice, check out the Bilingual Education blog, a partnership between Spanish- and English-speaking schools.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks develops learning experiences for K-12, university, and museum clients. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.