An Immigrant’s Advice: Learn English

I feel it is my duty as a naturalized American citizen to contribute to the ongoing debate on bilingual education. I came to this country with my family at the age of 8, and spent my formative years in East Los Angeles (Montebello), where most of my elementary school peers were Mexican Americans.

Needless to say, with few Korean students at my new school, I had both greater opportunity to practice English and the incentive to learn English as quickly as possible, so I could fit in with my new peers. In the process of absorbing English and playing with my new friends, I also picked up the customs and cultural practices of American society that would help me integrate.

My hard-working parents never had such opportunities to learn English or American folkways, and to this day their language fluency and social circle remain limited to fellow Koreans. My immigrant peers and I learned English and served as guides for our families in this strange new land.

Although I lost much of my homeland language in the process, I had a chance to learn much of it back during and after college, when I studied abroad in Korea.

It is essential for immigrant children to learn English and form diverse social networks as quickly as possible. The claims of bilingual education advocates that children need three to five years to transition to mainstream classes is patently wrong. It is not beneficial to students or society that many Latino and Asian students in California are shuffled off to bilingual education classes and remain segregated from other students for years. They are missing out on the greatest benefit of an American education: the opportunity to meet, learn and live with people different from themselves.

The debate about bilingual education stems from contrasting visions of our society. I am proud of my Korean roots, but believe that the U.S. public schools should provide every opportunity for new immigrants to join the dynamic mainstream--and that means integrated English-speaking class-rooms.

Growing up as the only Korean kid in the neighborhood, I was picked on a lot and experienced the injustices of discrimination. But I also experienced genuine friendships and realized the remarkable affection and ties that can form between diverse ethnic peoples in America.