Bilingualism and Education

The concept of bilingualism as applied to individual children and to educational programs is discussed, and the history of research on bilingual children and bilingual education programs in the United States is reviewed. Bilingualism has been defined predominantly in linguistic dimensions despite the fact that bilingualism is correlated with a number of nonlinguistic social parameters. The linguistic handle has served policymakers well in focusing on an educationally vulnerable population of students, but the handle is inadequate as the single focus of educational intervention. Future research will have to be directed toward a multifaceted vison ofbilingualism as a phenomenon embedded in society. Bilingualism is a term that has been used to describe an attribute of individual children as well as social institutions. At both levels, the topic has been dominated by controversy. On the individual level, debate has centered on the possible costs and benefits of bilingualism in young children. On the societal level, fiery argument can be witnessed in the United States about the wisdom of bilingual education and the official support of languages other than English in public institutions. Particularly in the latter case, emotions run hot because of the symbolism contained in language and its correlation with ethnic group membership. The controversy surrounding bilingualism is magnified by a sense of urgency generated by the changing demographic picture. In the United States, there are over 30 million individuals for whom English is not the primary language of the home. Of those, 2.5 million are children in the school age range, with this number expected to double by the year 2000. There are now many states in which the linguistic-minority school population is approaching 25% or more (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, New York, and Texas), and in many large urban school districts throughout the United States, 50% of the students may come from nonEnglish-speaking homes. Whether the debate is over the merits of bilingualism in individuals or institutions, there is considerable confusion over a basic definitional issue. The problem can be succinctly stated as follows: Is bilingualism strictly the knowledge and usage of two linguistic systems, or does it involve the social dimensions encompassed by the languages? Oscillation between these linguistic and social perspectives on bilingualism has frequently led to misconceptions about the development of bilingual children as well as misunderstanding in educational initiatives to serve linguistic-minority populations. As a case in point, consider the linguistic and social complexities contained in the following statement about school experiences by a ninth-grade Mexican-born boy who had immigrated from Mexico six months earlier. There is so much discrimination and hate. Even from other kids from Mexico who have been here longer. They don't treat us like brothers. They hate even more. It makes them feel more like natives. They want to be American. They don't want to speak Spanish to us, they already know English and how to act. If they're with us, other people will treat them more like wetbacks, so they try to avoid us. (Olsen, 1988, p. 36) Bilingualism, thought of simply as a bivariate function of linguistic proficiency in two languages, underrepresents the intricacies of tbe social setting. The history of research on bilingual children contains many false inferences about the effects of bilingualism based on a miscalculation of the complexity of the phenomenon. Similarly, current research to evaluate bilingual education programs takes an extremely narrow definition of bilingualism, that is, as the usage of two languages in instruc-