Bilingual Education Segregates Children to Their Disadvantage

Re “A Foot in Two Worlds--and a Language for Both” (May 5): Robin Abcarian is a wonderful writer with a gift for expressing what is in her mind and heart. On the subject of bilingual education, however, her mind and heart are misguided.

Perhaps she is right that the battle over the future of bilingual programs is about xenophobia, but not at all in the sense she imagines. Many Mexican Americans such as myself see bilingual education as an attempt to segregate Spanish-speaking children, to deny them the opportunity for total immersion in English at the time in their lives when their minds are most receptive to learning a new language.

The frustration and temporary social discomfort they experience while they adjust to English in the elementary school classroom are nothing--nothing--compared to the disadvantaged position in which they will find themselves as the difference between their English skills and those of native English speakers widens in junior and senior high school.

Robin’s “unembellished fact that there are places around this town where the language of the land is Spanish” is an unembellished statement of racial segregation. These “places” don’t include downtown Los Angeles law firms, entertainment offices, major medical centers or the administrative offices of any public educational facility.

While well-written, Abcarian’s column came across to me as an educated journalist saying, “Oh, please let these beautiful brown children hold onto their heritage.” Lo siento, Robin, but that’s the way you sound, and that attitude won’t help Latino children; it will destroy them.

DAN CABRERA

Glendale