Bilingual Education In Miami Essay, Research Paper
While California debates whether to stop teaching school children in two languages, the school
system in Miami, Florida is expanding bilingual education. This city at the crossroads of the
Americas is expanding bilingual education under the argument that students will need to speak,
read and write in English and Spanish when they reach the business world. The decision to do
this almost seems natural for a metropolis where the top-rated television stations broadcast in
Spanish, the top-ranked newspaper publishes a separate Spanish daily edition, many top civic
leaders speak effortless Spanish and Latinos have become the majority. Educators in Miami,
home to the first bilingual public school in the modern era, are baffled by the cultural and
political firefight over bilingual education in California.
Nowhere is the controversy more intense than in California. On June 2, 1998 there was a vote on
an anti-bilingual education initiative, Proposition 227. This proposition would end most bilingual
programs in California and give students with limited English skills about one year of special
English classes before placing them in the mainstream. To even have something like this on the
Ballot in California seems very odd. California has more students with limited English skills than
any other state. California has approximately 1.4 million students with limited English and about
30% of them are in formal bilingual programs, including some two-way programs. The most
common approach in California is transitional bilingual education, in which students often spend
more time being taught in their native language than in English for their first school years. Due
to the large population of Spanish speakers in California I would think that educators would want
to mock Miami s style of teaching both English and Spanish.
In Miami educators view it differently than they do in California. They look at bilingual
education as a business opportunity for students. Miami s trades with Latin America amount to
billions of dollars a year. Top business leaders say that Miami can not afford to do with out
bilingual education. James F. Partridge, chief of Latin American and Caribbean operations for
Visa International said, I don t give a hoot about the political aspects of it. To me, that s a lot of
garbage. I am interested in the financial well being of this community. We need bilingual people
to survive. Partridge is so concerned about the issue that his office gives remedial lessons in
Spanish and Portuguese to dozens of employees whose weak bilingual skills don t allow them to
communicate with clients in those languages. The pro-bilingual movement for over 340,000
students in Miami highlights several issues often overlooked in debates about California s
Proposition 227.
In California, bilingual education is usually seen as a program just for students with limited
English skills. But in Miami, bilingual education is sold as a program for everyone. I like this
approach. If a large portion of the population speaks Spanish than it is only common sense to
teach students who don t know English, English and students who don t know Spanish, Spanish.
If everyone could speak the two most common used languages in that community than
communication would be much better. I say the two most common used languages are good
enough. Our educators don t have the time or money to teach every language spoken. Like
Whittemore says in her essay Endangered Languages Then there is the irony of increased
literacy: As more native people receive formal education, schools cannot print textbooks in every
language. If states can teach the two most common languages than it will benefit them greatly.
It would also be easier for students moving to California from Mexico or Central America.
Americans even have trouble pronouncing names of people from Central America. Sometimes
students are forced to change their birth names to fit in. This issue was addressed in the essay
Taking in the New Land written by Edite Cunha. The teacher in this essay Mrs. Donahue tells a
young Portuguese girl to change her name. She tells her In America you only need two or three
names. Mary Edith is a lovely name. And it will be easier to pronounce. If every student were
forced to learn the two most common languages in their community than issues like this would
not occur. Also by teaching two languages students will not forget how to speak their native
language.
In California, many people assume that the children of immigrants can learn their native
language from family while studying only English at school. In Miami, many people have
concluded that native language skills erode without help from schools. Consider the story of
Hilda Garcia, 26, born to Cuban parents and raised in Miami. She spoke Spanish at home but
attended English-only schools as a child. She currently works for a steamship line that does
business with Panama, and she finds her Spanish lacking considerably. Her company receives
faxes and e-mails in Spanish. Hilda has to have three dictionaries next to her so she can read
them. Hoping to give her 6 year old son a formal grounding in Spanish, she has enrolled him in
Coral Way Elementary School.
At Coral Way Elementary all students spend three hours a day learning English in one classroom
and two hours in Spanish in another classroom. There are no distinctions made among the
newcomer from Nicaragua who has limited English ability, the young Haitian who speaks
mainly English and Creole and the third-generation Cuban American who knows a bit of Spanish
and a lot of English. About a third of the school s student s start with limited English skills, but
nearly all are close to fluency by the third grade. Principal Migdania D. Vega has hosted legions
of out-of-town educators to try and spread her schools way of bilingual education.
My own beliefs are that bilingual education is a necessity not only in California but also in any
state where two languages are spoken by a large portion of the population. Miami has a great
way of teaching bilingual education. I think states like California and Texas should adopt these
teaching styles. Maybe Miami has adapted to bilingual education so well due to the fact that at
least half of the businesses there do at least 25% of their work in Spanish. In a survey done by
the University of Miami it was found that 95% of businesses agreed on the importance of a
bilingual work force. They also found that people who know both English and Spanish earned an
average of $3000.00 more a year than those who only know English. Maybe it will take time for
people in other states like California and Texas to realize the importance of a bilingual education
for our children.
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