The Benefits of English Immersion

A powerful movement in bilingual education, spearheaded in California, advocates the integration of limited-English proficient students into English-instruction classes.

The threshold of a new year, a new century, and a new millennium is a natural time for taking stock of the current status of social trends. This coincides with a dramatic reconsideration of the 30-year policy called bilingual education. A review of events leading to federal and state legislation and court cases on behalf of non-English-speaking students, the policies and practices intended to help these students, and the results of these initiatives gives us an informed view of bilingual education today.

Background of Bilingual Education

The years of heaviest immigration to the United States, from the late 1880s through the 1960s, might be characterized as the "Early Stone Age" of education policy for immigrant children. There was no policy. Children were left to sink or swim, to make progress, unassisted, in learning the common language of the school and the community. People believed that young children naturally pick up a new language without any help. Those who did learn English well enough and soon enough proceeded with their schooling; those who were not so adept at language acquisition dropped out of school and went to work in factories or on farms.