Bilingual Education

We take issue with Joseph Yi’s assumption that the primary purpose of education is to assimilate (Voices, April 11). At the risk of stating the obvious: Education is about education. Above all, we send our children to school to equip them with the academic tools that will help them succeed later in life. Bilingual education does just that; children learn essential academic concepts in their native language while also learning English.

Yi seems to have been successful in learning English without bilingual education; however, he does not say if he was able to learn English within 180 school days as Prop. 227 requires, nor does he recognize the irony of his spending his college years and beyond trying to regain the language he so eagerly discarded. The success of one cannot and should not be generalized to an entire population of children. Bilingual education is one method among many that will help prepare our children to be their best.

MICHELLE CHENG

Program Assistant

Asian Pacific American Legal

Center of Southern California