Bilingual Education

I can’t believe it! After 20 years of failed “creative and innovative” bilingual programs, the Los Angeles Board of Education members are back to square one. Now they are proposing to expand instruction in Spanish from preschool through 12th grade (Metro, March 18). Give me a break! When are Latino children supposed to become competent in English? In adult school?

I don’t care how you cut it, this is more of the same tired, bankrupt mish mash directly responsible for the bottom-of-the-heap reading scores and high dropout rates of Latino kids. This approach is certainly not one that puts these students on a college pipeline; rather, it puts them directly into the pipeline to the box factory and the unemployment office. The schools are proposing to produce a permanent underclass!

Maybe what we need are vouchers. You can bet your boots that parents of limited and non-English-speaking children will flock to Catholic and other private schools to enroll their children. They know that to succeed in this country their children must learn English as fast as possible.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If the gringos had tried to devise a plan to keep the Mexicans down, they could not have come up with one more devastatingly effective than bilingual education.

FELIX CASTRO

Los Angeles