Bilingual Classes

Regarding your article, “Less English Urged in Bilingual Teaching” (Times, June 18), I must comment from the viewpoint of one of many Orientals who began my education process without the knowledge of any English.

We were forced to learn English to survive and excel in school and so, we learned very quickly and perforce, learned without benefit of bilingual education just as the young Vietnamese children are also doing, and very successfully.

Bilingual education defeats the initiative of the Spanish speaking children by reaffirming the necessity to speak and think in Spanish perpetuating the difficulties faced by the students. With each successive year of bilingual education, the dependency on their native tongue grows which eventually manifests in an estrangement from the world outside the ghetto.

Continued bilingual education will perpetuate the agonies of low-paying jobs, welfare and, escape into the upwardly mobile community will become in impossibility. It is up to the parents to encourage and instill in their children, the importance of education as a means to escape the confines of the poor.

KEYOKA KURUMADA

Culver City