Bilingualism and Bilingual Education in American Society

In “Bilingual Education is Necessary,” María Estella Brisk expresses the opinion that bilingual education is a vital part of the American education system; as an integral component of the American education system, the programs help to provide an equality of education to all students regardless of language of origin. She believes that bilingual members of an educational community enrich the system, which she thinks is for the benefit of all students in American education. She criticizes her opponents’ opinions that bilingual education is wasteful and unnecessary as being regressive and xenophobic. She claims that these biases against bilingual students are a form of institutionalized prejudice that exists within the American academic system. These prejudices are, in this respect, still obstacles which need to be overcome in the American education system in order to improve the system to be equal for all students (Brisk).

In the article “One Nation, One Language?”, Susan Headden believes that it would be beneficial to The United States to enforce the English language as the official language of the nation while disregarding others. In her vision, it would be a nearly impossible feat to make accommodations for the countless minority languages spoken in the country: languages which go far beyond Spanish.

She argues that immigrants in the past, such as Germans or Italians, have integrated into American society in the past without the needs for special accommodations that enforcing bilingual education would create. This would be a drain of economic resources. She insists that The United States would still maintain its identity of being a cultural melting pot of people from around the world who would still be able to speak their languages at home, but that English should be the sole official language for all intents and purposes. She makes these claims on grounds of practicality, not out of xenophobic biases against people from different backgrounds (Headden).

In the study “Assessing the Advantages of Bilingualism for the Children of Immigrants,” Tanya Golash-Boza evaluates the genuine advantages of bilingualism in American society. Her findings demonstrate that bilingualism is generally advantageous in communities of Latinos; these findings demonstrate that bilingual Latinos are generally more successful in life than monolingual Latinos who can only speak either English or Spanish exclusively.

However, her results differ depending on location of the community and in which area her subjects were being tested. These discoveries show that there are more social factors at play than simply whether or not a person is bilingual. Other factors can include family expectations and the opportunities present within their communities outside of their families. By and large, the advantages of bilingualism are generally positive, but vary depending on the communities examined (Golash-Boza).

These three articles illustrate three different opinions on the same topic: that of whether or not bilingual education and bilingualism is beneficial or necessary within American society. Out of the articles, Susan Headden takes the most negative opinion toward bilingual accommodations within The United States, because previous generations have been capable of integrating into American society without the extra help, which she believes, is demanded by the current generation of immigrants. The beliefs extended in the other two articles align more or less in a positive manner toward the topic of bilingual education in The United States.

Both of these articles believe that bilingualism is a general positive in American society because it brings diversity and a variety of different viewpoints into the equation. Tanya Golash-Boza’s study does, however, mention that the advantages of bilingualism do vary depending on the circumstances in which the individual lives; this does now, however, deny the fact that bilingualism, in general, is a beneficial skill for an individual to possess. Despite the counterpoints against accepting bilingualism as a part of the new American society, the benefits of bilingualism do shine through as being more advantageous than monolingualism in general.