N.Y.C.’s Bilingual Education: Still Crazy After All These Years

A report in Wednesday’s New York Times revealed that Latino parents in Brooklyn have joined together to protest their children’s perpetual assignment to programs that fail to teach them English. The report is of a kind with previous Times revelations about failures in the nation’s bilingual programs since the mid-1960’s.

“What is happening in New York City is unacceptable,” explained Mauro E. Mujica, Chairman/CEO of U.S. English. “So-called ‘bilingual education’ has come to mean that children learn very little English in the course of a school day. Hispanic parents are like everyone else--they want their children to learn the language of opportunity in this country. It is a shame that educational bureaucrats are failing to respond to the needs of the people they are supposed to serve.”

In the report, Times education columnist Samuel G. Freedman chronicles a series of program breakdowns: children making progress in English classes being abruptly transferred to “bilingual” classes; multiple English proficient students being stuck in bilingual programs, including one English proficient sixth-grader who must resort to learning English by watching the Cartoon Network. Parent Benerita Salsedo adds, “I’m very angry. The school is supposed to do what’s best for the kids. The school puts my kids’ education in danger, because everything is in English here.”

“As the Times aptly puts it, ‘It’s déjà vu all over again’,” Mujica added. “Poor immigrant workers who struggle to make a better life for their children are essentially ignored by the ‘we-know-better’ educational establishment. In 1967, the New York Times reported that Puerto Rican parents were picketing the Chairman of the Board of Education, demanding that their children learn more English. The city has failed a generation of immigrant schoolchildren. It can ill afford to fail the next.”

U.S. English, Inc. is the nation's oldest and largest non-partisan citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. Founded in 1983 by the late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa of California, U.S. English, Inc. (www.usenglish.org) now has more than 1.8 million members.