Bilingual Education

Regarding the statement by Secretary of Education William J. Bennett (Times, Sept. 26) that “bilingual education does not work,” I would like, as a former teacher of almost three decades’ experience with Spanish-speaking high school students, to make the following observations.

I have seen that somewhat more can always be accomplished bilingually (rather than using English alone) in teaching Spanish-speaking students with a limited knowledge of English such subjects as history, government, urban studies, consumer education, and driver education.

If bilingual education does not work, why is the bilingual method so predominantly used by teachers introducing foreign languages everywhere? There would seem to be a much stronger case to suppress entirely the use of the students’ native language when the sole object is to teach another language rather than a non-linguistic subject. Yet even in foreign language teaching the bilingual method is predominant everywhere. Bilingual education obviously facilitates communication when one language predominates in the teaching materials and another language is the primary language of students who are unfamiliar with the language of the teaching materials.

The student, and no one else, is normally the best judge as to whether bilingual education works for him.

Bilingual education is most often opposed by those who have the least practical experience with it, and usually the opposition derives from the idea that it is an unfair concession to a foreign culture, and the fear that a means (Spanish language) used in the classroom may become to some extent an end in itself (Hispanic culture). These concerns often lurk behind the thesis that “bilingual education does not work,” to which they are not logically related.

No educational method works as well as we would like it to, but bilingual education is the common-sense approach to certain circumstances that so frequently occur in our Southwest.

JOHN H. RANDOLPH

Oxnard