Bilingual Education in the School Systems of the United States

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Over half of the world’s population today is bilingual, meaning that it is able to use two languages with equal fluency, and sixty-six percent of children are raised to speak more than one language. At the same time, only 6.3 percent of children in the United States are being raised this way. In an effort to keep up with the times, many school systems throughout the world practice bilingual education, or teaching two languages simultaneously. Bilingual education from kindergarten or earlier is not a common practice in the United States, which is greatly disadvantageous to the students. Bilingualism has many positive effects on physical and mental health, and it even has social and emotional benefits. It has been proven that bilingualism can have positive effects on the mind as early as seven months of age, and some researchers suggest that the mind is able to absorb a new language the best between birth and age seven. Because of these things, bilingual education should be implemented in the school systems of the United States starting in kindergarten or even before.
Bilingual education is common practice in nine out of the world’s top ten education systems. In countries such as Luxembourg, as many as ninety-nine percent of people are bilingual, and around fifty-six percent of the European Union is bilingual. Over one hundred and fifty major research studies have confirmed the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Bilingual students have been proven to outperform monolingual students, or students who only speak one language, in areas that are not even related to language. Studies show that there is a very strong correlation between foreign language and spatial reasoning abilities, which means that bilingual people have a...

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...ly from it. Minds would be strengthened and sharpened well into the later years of life, and even in areas not related to language such as mathematics. Memory would be increased, and diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could be prevented through bilingualism. More of the brain would be used to its full potential on a consistent basis. Children would learn to accept more cultures, and have a mindset that is more open to change if bilingualism was achieved early on in life, and they would be able to better control their emotions on their own. If bilingual education took place from kindergarten or before, children of the United States would be more adequately prepared in many senses to handle the world as it is today and where it is headed. Let’s give current and future students one of the greatest gifts possible-bilingualism through bilingual education.

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