Bilingual Schools

[Bini]

For those of you in the United States, what do you think about schools having a bilingual environment, specifically English and Spanish? Teachers would speak both languages while teaching, so students would become fluent in understanding English and Spanish. This would be the primary method of conversing, and of course, would not bar against a language class (such as French or German). So to reiterate, English speakers would learn Spanish and Spanish speakers would learn English. I think a program like this would be super beneficial, and in many ways. I understand that revamping school curriculums involve politics and money but from a social/cultural aspect I see no negatives. Are there cons? I'm not sure how private schools and home schooling would embrace this concept, I guess they would do their own thing.

[Vort]

In principle, I think it's a marvelous idea. In practice, such things typically get bogged down in politics. Also, about the time the children reach seventh grade, they need to take increasingly specialized classes that may be best taught in a single language. So how bilingual schooling operates into a high school environment isn't clear to me.

Regretfully, we did not institute bilingual or multilingual education in our home school. (I suppose we still could...) Others have done so, and it's perfectly natural and a really great thing.

[rameumptom]

For those who only speak Spanish, it would be a major disadvantage for them. They need immersion in English in order to understand and speak English well enough to do well in advanced classes and in college. A bilingual school would just give them reason to never learn English well, and so hurt them in the long run.

[Guest]

Speaking from my observations of the "Spanish Immersion" Elementary Schools in my county, they all are in the lower ranked schools.

Spanish Immersion schools in my county are Magnet Schools that teach in both English and Spanish - just as Bini described. It immerses English speakers in Spanish and Spanish speakers in English so that all students come out of it completely bilingual.

Unfortunately, what happens is that these schools get a high enrollment of new immigrants who do not speak English, therefore, in teaching things like Addition and Subtraction, a lot more time is spent just parsing out the instructions. And because the school also teaches in Spanish, these children don't feel as much pressure to learn English and so then tend to become resistant to it. Some kids get it faster than others, but Public School teachers always teach to the lowest denominator... so both Spanish and English speaking students are disadvantaged in the long run.

As somebody who speaks 4 languages, I think this type of instruction is detrimental to education. I believe in one language as the medium of instruction in education. I grew up in schools using English as the medium of instruction. I speak Cebuano Visayan as my native language. I was thrown into English immersion in Kindergarten. Also, we have to learn Filipino - the National Language - but the school is not an "immersion" school in Filipino. Filipino is a required subject for every year (3 credit hours) in both Elementary and High School and that's the only time teachers speak in Filipino. The rest of the time, they speak in English. But, I spent some time in Manila where Filipino is the native language, so I got immersed in Filipino in a social setting so Filipino became my 2nd language more than English. Learning "school english" is completely different from conversational English, so I didn't really get fluent in it until I came to America.

Language dexterity is best learned through social immersion while very young - that is, throw an English speaking child for one summer in a place where only Spanish is spoken... you'll be surprised at how fast he learns to communicate in that language. Now, speaking it and reading/writing it are 2 completely different skills. Reading/writing a language is best learned through formal training.

Edited July 31, 2012 by anatess

[ChooseTheSun]

My 6 kids and a bunch of cousins are in a Japanese immersion school -- same curriculum as any other public school, but for half the day the courses are taught in Japanese (math, scial studies, science...) K-12th grade. Its a great program. My kids speak fluent Japanese without ever taking a "Japanese class". Its not to accomidate non-english speakers, although I think one or two kids from Japan did enroll and were great leaders in the class. The goal is to teach everything they'd get naturally, just half-time in Japanese. Native Japanese speakers teach the classes, and these are student interns fron Japan in every class. There are Taiko drumming groups, Japanese art and poetry clubs, trips to Japan, Japanese speech contests, and Japanese kids come to stay with us in the summers. For our family, it was an absolute gift to have such a great program in our back yard.

[pam]

Already sounds like the high school I went to and it wasn't planned that way. I just happened to be a minority.

[Guest]

I was pretty certain somebody posted about an English-Japanese school yesterday... I was gonna comment on that but I don't see the post anymore, so not sure if I imagined it!

[friedmann]

I went to a German-French school and I have to say I did not like it.

Anyone familiar with the secondary German education system should know how hard it is by itself, but having to talk difficult topics in social science, geography and history *exclusively* in French after two years of language classes is pure torture. Don't do that to your children. Honestly.

[Bini]

Good points.

As an after thought, such a program would likely best be utilized in an elementary school setting but that alone, I'm not sure how beneficial it would be in the long run. When I lived in Portugal, I attended a Catholic school there that was a bilingual environment, Portuguese and English. So from Montessori age to Year 3 (which is basically 3rd grade), I was immersed in both languages, and caught onto Portuguese quickly. Sadly, I don't recall much of it now but the experience in retrospect was pretty neat. After that, all my schooling was done in English, with French being a secondary strong influence (which I still understand) but I did not have to do assignments in French. I can see how pushing a bilingual environment on older children in ALL studies can be overwhelming and perhaps a disservice in some cases.

Thanks for all your thoughts.

[ChooseTheSun]

I was pretty certain somebody posted about an English-Japanese school yesterday... I was gonna comment on that but I don't see the post anymore, so not sure if I imagined it!

No you didn't imagine it -- it was me, but I have performance anxiety, so I deleted it :)

The jist of my post was that my kids all went through, or are going through, a Japanese immersion school, where regular public school classes are taught, just half the day in Japanese. Math in Japanese, Science in Japanese, Spelling in English (naturally)... It's an awesome program. Every year that a have a kindergardener start up, I promise myself that I'll learn Japanese right along with them, but after a month they leave me in the dust!

Angelina Jolie's kid(s) attended a similar school in New York, except they spoke French half the day. Over $30,000 a year tuition! Probably the food was better, though :)

Edited August 1, 2012 by ChooseTheSun

[Vort]

The jist of my pist

I'm using that.

[annewandering]

One of my kids was in a bilingual class in the first grade. There were no spaces in the regular classes. Her teacher gave her lots of pictures to color since she did not know spanish. She learned to color really well. Math and reading not so much.

That was a specific incidence but it was devastating to her education so I am not so fond of the idea.

In theory it ought to work but in practice it just ends up being a spanish, or other language, school inside an english school, which accomplishes very little in a long term sense. Better to just get them into english to start with.

[ChooseTheSun]

I'm using that.

And thus the reason for performance anxiety... .

[ChooseTheSun]

I was pretty certain somebody posted about an English-Japanese school yesterday... I was gonna comment on that but I don't see the post anymore, so not sure if I imagined it!

You didn't imagine it. I deleted my original post because I had performance anxiety. I re-typed it to respond to you, but within seconds my typos provoked someone to make fun of me, so I deleted the second post. Ah well...I tried. :)

[Guest]

No you didn't imagine it -- it was me, but I have performance anxiety, so I deleted it :)

The jist of my post was that my kids all went through, or are going through, a Japanese immersion school, where regular public school classes are taught, just half the day in Japanese. Math in Japanese, Science in Japanese, Spelling in English (naturally)... It's an awesome program. Every year that a have a kindergardener start up, I promise myself that I'll learn Japanese right along with them, but after a month they leave me in the dust!

Angelina Jolie's kid(s) attended a similar school in New York, except they spoke French half the day. Over $30,000 a year tuition! Probably the food was better, though :)

You mentioned they learn Japanese without benefit of a class in the Japanese language. Did I understand that right? I'm just very skeptical about this. Japanese is a very complex language. A teacher speaking to a student would have shades of differences in language than a student speaking to a teacher, etc., due to the ingrained respectfulness in the language. Without formal education in the Japanese language, it is going to be very difficult to learn the Japanese sentence structure and vocabulary enough to understand a Japanese newscast, for example, unless Japanese is spoken primarily in school grounds. Reading and writing in Japanese would be impossible - they have over 50,000 letters in kanji. At least 1,000 needed to read the newspaper.

In Vort's language - I'm not bagging on your children's education. I'm just skeptical about the usefulness of the instruction.

When I went to English schools, I had 3-9 credit hours of English language instruction every year from Elementary to 2nd year of College - Vocabulary, Writing, Language Structure (subject predicate direct-object, nouns pronouns, verbs, etc.), Reading and Phonics, Literature, Figurative Expressions, Speech, etc. That is in addition to an all-English medium of instruction. Students naturally, wouldn't speak English in the corridors or the school grounds - we spoke in our native tongue. And, of course, we don't speak it at home either. We read a lot of English books which drastically increases vocabulary - the school can only use so much English words in the course of academic instruction. Without these classes, it would be impossible for me to, say, get up and talk to the class about my summer vacation in English or completely understand a non-subtitled/non-dubbed English movie. When I set foot in America, I learned the difference between saying "I'm going to finish my dinner." to "I'm going to consume my dinner". That was something we didn't learn in school. And then, of course, an American newscaster has formal English "accent" that is completely different from my husband's "I want some ey-ggs for breakfast" accent. I still have a hard time understanding Southern Georgia - I got pulled over by a cop in Georgia once and I looked at his mouth forming some form of English words and could not catch enough words to get what he's trying to tell me...

And what's even interesting about this is that - Filipino is not the medium of instruction - we learned it through 3-credit-hours of formal instruction every year from Elementary to High School. Yet, because I had a chance to stay in Manila, I became more proficient at it than English that I never got to use in constant conversation.

But, I grant that students exposed to a foreign language (like Bini being exposed to French, for example) gives them an edge when they do go to that country. They'll have a much, much easier time absorbing the language than somebody who is not familiar with the foreign sounds. Angelina Jolie's children is advantaged because they can travel to France any day of the week.

Edited August 1, 2012 by anatess

[Guest]

You didn't imagine it. I deleted my original post because I had performance anxiety. I re-typed it to respond to you, but within seconds my typos provoked someone to make fun of me, so I deleted the second post. Ah well...I tried. :)

Don't worry about typos or anything! We understood what you meant.

Hang on, let me bang on Vort's head for ya...

And I hope you don't take my above post as anything confrontational or something. Japanese instruction is a very interesting subject. Your thoughts on it would be very very welcome.

Edited August 1, 2012 by anatess

[Vort]

You didn't imagine it. I deleted my original post because I had performance anxiety. I re-typed it to respond to you, but within seconds my typos provoked someone to make fun of me, so I deleted the second post. Ah well...I tried. :)

If you are talking about my response, let me reassure you that I was admiring your use of language, not making fun. I see now that you may have meant "the gist of my post", but at the time I thought you were saying "the gist of my 'pist", meaning "the underlying meaning of my epistle", which I thought was quite cool.

[ChooseTheSun]

Don't worry about typos or anything! We understood what you meant. And I hope you don't take my above post as anything confrontational or something. Japanese instruction is a very interesting subject. Your thoughts on it would be very very welcome.

Thanks...I'll dip my toe in the pool once more...

OK, so I've had all my kids graduate from, or are mid-way through a public school that teaches regular subjects, just half the day in Japanese. They learned Japanese naturally, not like in a language class where you memorize verbs and structure. From day one they were spoken to in Japanese, homework was in Japanese, classroom art in Japanese. The teachers are all native Japanese Speakers, and there are two or three teacher interns from Japan. They learned to read English and Japanese at the same time. They don't have an American accent (I'm told). By 4th grade they are competing in college speech contests (with Native Englsh speakers learning Japanese in college). Standardized test scores are all about what you'd expect in a regular classroom., some are gifted, some not so much. My experience as a parent is 100% positive.

Edited August 1, 2012 by ChooseTheSun

[ClickyClack]

I'm against it.

For the record, I am fluent in Spanish, and the schools in my area are dual-immersion, English and Spanish.

What I have seen as a result is that in three years of being immersed in Spanish for half of the day, most kids still can't have even a basic, simple conversation in Spanish. And because they have been lost during the Spanish half of the day, their education has suffered.

It never fails to amaze me that we have to have special classes for Spanish-speaking immigrants, because it's hard for them to learn in a foreign language, but we expect our kids to learn at full capacity in a foreign language.

One of my friends in fluent in Japanese, he served a mission there, and went back and lived there for years after. His son is in a Chinese dual-immersion school, and he is completely against it for the same reasons that I am. They spend 5-8 hours per week just on Chinese in addition to other homework, and the kid still doesn't get as good of education during the Chinese part of the day as during the English part of the day.

Yes, learning a second language is good. But not if it costs you a great deal of the rest of your education. Overall, I think that this is a sham put on by the teachers union to try to make it look like they're not sucking.

Edited August 2, 2012 by ClickyClack

[Guest]

I am convinced that Language Magnet schools should be structured in this manner:

Offer 3 or more credit hours learning the foreign language as a separate class than the rest of the academics (just like having a french class). Magnet schools spend one extra school hour per day in their magnet program, so language schools can use this extra hour of the day (5 hours per week) just learning the chosen foreign languge. A language school may offer more than one foreign language track that a child will follow throughout his time in the language school. He may switch tracks mid-way by teacher evaluation to guarantee that the student will not be left behind in the new track. Have this language learning every year from Elementary to High School then provide an option every summer to spend at least one month in the foreign country that speaks the language, and then require 5th grade graduates, 8th grade graduates, and high school graduates to spend at least one month of the summer in the foreign country.

All academics should be taught in English as the most dominant national and international auxiliary language used by all the schools in America to set a standard.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Edited August 2, 2012 by anatess

[ChooseTheSun]

I guess a case can be made either way. It might depend on the preferences and particulars to the family.

For example, I know for me I would make a terrible home school teacher, and my kids would've missed out on so much. For other families, home schooling is a life saving, terrific idea that works for them. My brother sends his kids to what I secretly call a "hippy-dippy" school. No letter-grades, instead teachers give a strength-based narrative conversation....not my thing. Yet my brother's family love it, and when his kids and their classmates transition to the public high school they keep pace and exceed the other kids in test scores and overall academic functioning. Both these models of education aren't for everyone, but it doesn't mean kids can't thrive.

There are plenty of families at my kids' school who opt out of the Japanese track for whatever reason, likely including the reasons others have mentioned in this thread. I can imagine that an immersion program forced into existance because non-English speakers can't adapt any other way or an immersion program shoved down the throats of public school families would be a disaster. In our situation, I don't get the sense that teachers are trying to get away with something. Rather, it takes a huge commitment to success because no extra money is allotted to support the program, like a bigger budget for teachers from Japan. It's fundraising, lots of parent and teacher volunteering, and consistent success by graduates over the almost 20 years of its existance. If language immersion was a smoke-and-mirror to divert attention away from a subpar education, it would be evident by now, hopefully.