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November 2, 1998
In this week’s lecture, Professor Ling-Chi Wang from the Ethnic Studies department came to talk about bilingual education in America. He had a very one-sided opinion on it since he is very intimate about the topic.
He started off his lecture by describing Proposition 227. It is a proposition that would end bilingual education and would make all children, immigrant or not, to be educated in English only. He stated that this proposition is aimed against mainly Asians and Latinos since there are a lot of immigrants from either Mexico or from Asian countries. He felt that the struggle for bilingual education was an issue of civil rights since he strongly felt that it is necessary for educating the youth of our nation, especially immigrants, and they would be denied that right with an English only education.
The belief before was that if everyone was educated in the same classroom, had the same books, and had the same education, it was perfectly fine. However, they forgot about people that couldn’t speak English very well. They were denied equal education and they couldn’t learn at the same speed as other children that were brought up learning English. I felt that this was wrong. I would be mad if I was denied the right to learn simply because I didn’t know English that well.
He finally talked about a submersion program where the children are taught a language, such as Chinese, and they learn English after that. He felt that this was the way for children to learn and he gave proof with his daughter. I was amazed at how fast his daughter learned English, even though it was not her first language.
