Arguments Against Bilingualism In Schools

The education of 'bilingual' students has always been closely tied to social, political and economic concerns. In 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was enacted, and this act provided for the education of students of "limited English speaking ability" (Wiese & Garcia, 1998, p. 1). Though the act did not prescribe a particular type of program to schools, it included bilingual education as an approved option for educating these students (Wiese & Garcia, 1998). The controversy over the bilingual education continues to surge from 1880s to the present. Fitzgerald (1993) states that from pre-colonial days into the mid-1800s, bilingualism was not only widespread, it was respected and appreciated (p. 37). Further, he asserts that John Adams proposed

This catastrophic era was a turning point to the concept of bilingualism. The antagonists of the bilingual education wanted that the English should be used in schools, and they considered English as an intensified medium for the bilingual students to flourish academically and linguistically. Assimilationists averred that the success of the bilingual students would heavily rely on the pace of their immersion into the mainstream English only class. They always viewed bilingual education as a threat to a national unity. Bilingual education is considered as a 'melting pot' or a education for LEP students to nurture in the target language(English) academically, socially and linguistically, without the support of the students' native language, but it should be conformed with so called American Culture. Benjamin Franklin was so worried about this prospect that he established one of the first groups of English language schools for Germans with the hope of helping them to better assimilate into the English-speaking culture (Crawford, 1996).What emerges is a belief that the immersion in English ensures the fastest acquisition in English

If a student is literate in her/his native language, the native language literacy skills can be transferred and used in reading and writing skills of L2. There is a powerful relationship that exists between native language competence and the second language acquisition. Knowledge of multiple languages or multi-competence that inform and enrich one another, helped me to recognize the sounds and grammatical features of the second language that ensure better understanding of a second language learning. School and political communities recognized the importance of students' knowledge in multiple languages that help culturally diverse students in learning the second language. For example, in 1870, the U.S. Commissioner of Education stated: "The German language has actually become the second language of our Republic, and knowledge of German is now considered essential to a finished education"(cited in Zeydel, 1964,