Valley Commentary : The Debate on Bilingual Education Polarizes School Faculties : Teachers opposed to instruction methods aimed at educating limited-English students forget that their own ancestors often spoke in other tongues.

Just when teachers begin to nod off at a faculty meeting, someone mentions bilingual education. Eyes click open, and teachers divide into pro and con camps.

Regardless of their opinions, all teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are receiving 24 hours of bilingual education training during four pupil-free days. Skip the mandated workshops and a teacher risks transfer or dismissal.

Although all attend, many grumble so vehemently that they’re not hearing the message. Instead they describe how their European ancestors learned English without any special help.

This is America, and they shouldn’t come here if they’re not going to speak English.

Who’s saying immigrants don’t want to speak English? Check out any night school and you’ll find classrooms with standing room only.

How quickly we forget that our Colonial ancestors lived in a multilingual community and that assimilation took generations. When Benjamin Franklin promoted a program to phase out all but English instruction in 1750, the Pennsylvania Germans voted him out of the Colonial assembly. Bilingual education stayed.

Despite the facts, there is little movement from one camp to the other. Everyone has an opinion, and few listen to anyone else’s.

During one of these compulsory workshops, Michael Genzuk, director of the USC School of Education Latino Teacher Project, hauled out some statistics. In the LAUSD, 86 languages are spoken. In California, 1,179,000 public school students are identified as having limited English proficiency. That’s 23% of the state student population, and the number is growing. The Los Angeles figure is closer to 66%.

Our student population with primary languages other than English continues to grow. And that’s the message.

Faced with the facts, opponents of bilingual education argue that it’s impossible to teach in 86 languages. And they are absolutely right. In one of my English classes my students’ primary languages include Vietnamese, Tagalog, Spanish, Mandarin and Egyptian. And there are only 20 students in the class.

Although teaching to a diverse student population is a formidable task, it is not impossible. Although called bilingual, the workshops do not demand that teachers speak Spanish. They offer strategies for teaching in “sheltered English,” using devices which are helpful and relatively simple to employ. Things like slowing down, repeating the same idea in different ways, using visuals to supplement the reading, previewing the text so students have an idea what to expect, connecting new material to curriculum already mastered. It’s just good teaching.

Nevertheless, there is a great reluctance to do what is perceived as dumbing down the curriculum. Outspoken critics, usually faculty members who are closest to retirement, can be heard defiantly declaring, “I’m not changing, and you can’t make me.” Fortunately, their numbers are dwindling.

The theory behind the compulsory training, and the hope, is that once educators confront the myths and examine the current school demographics, they’ll be ready to learn the techniques for teaching a linguistically diverse population.

Unfortunately, other issues cloud the debate. There’s considerable resentment of the inclusion of politically correct hyphenated nationalisms which, I and many of my colleagues believe, further alienates us from one another and seems to endorse the non-acquisition of English. It doesn’t help that the pro-bilingual advocates often insinuate that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is a racist.

Although sparks have been flying in the faculty lounge, teachers try to keep their frustrations out of the classroom. We aren’t always successful.

I share many of my colleagues’ frustration over the fact that, in additions to the curriculum, I must teach about sex and AIDS, must counsel kids in crisis, must try to steer them away from drugs, must watch for signs of hunger and child abuse. In eighth-grade English we’re working on manners.

On bilingual education I sit in the pro camp. The other issues are matters to be fought in other venues. The federal government has to re-examine its immigration policies. Parents have to be educated to feed and shelter and love their children so the schools won’t have to do it.

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Teachers have control only of their classrooms. And if the kids walking in the doors are unable to speak English, then we’ll have to adjust our lessons, like it or not.

The goal, after all, for both advocates of bilingual education and for those who’d toss it out, is for all our graduates to be English-language proficient.