Equality for Non-English Speaking Students

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Living in California comes with a social-cultural belief that the only approved and acceptable language to be spoken is English. Looking at our schools and diversely multi-cultural society it’s quite the opposite. From an education perspective we see the influx of languages and students either born or migrating to America. Most non-English speaking children today are now born within the United States. Our civil rights state that we are equal in human rights to receive the same treatment even in educational programs. In California our primary language taught in public school education is English based. Our English Ethnocentrism brought on the Nationality Act of 1906 that required immigrants to speak English for naturalization purposes which lead to the Security Act of 1950 that required reading and writing as well in English.
Throughout our historical evolution of civil rights we saw several instances of fighting for the equalization of rights including our non-English speaking students getting fair treatment. Looking at the historical foundation of language and instruction for English Learners, parents became enraged about the discrimination taking place in our public school systems. Major historical changes have taken place since the early 1900’s “sink or swim” mentality of public education of English Learners. According to http://www.colorincolorado.org/policy/history/ the timeline provided below some of the key indicators were established to lead us to where we are today in equal education rights for all students.
• 1964 Civil Rights Act: Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the operation of all federally assisted programs.
• The Bilingual Education Act, Title VII of the Elem...

... middle of paper ...

...provements might help impact our ever evolving multi-cultural California state. As teachers we can incorporate students native language as a part of learning while teaching them the requirements that California has set as a standard language.

Works Cited

Foundations for Multilingualism in Education (Caslon, 2011) ELL Policy History. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/policy/history/

A Chronology of Federal Law and Policy Impacting Language Minority Students
By: Texas Education Agency (2011) Retrieved from (http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/50856/).

Krashen, Stephen D Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning
Pearson Custom Text Ch. 17 pg. 353

O’Connell, Jack, Superintendent of Public Instruction. State of Education remarks, 2006 www.cde.ca.gov/sp/el/er/.../elfaq.doc‎

Pearson Custom Text Education SPE 481 Chapter 17 pg 328-353

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