Passage of Proposition 227
On June 2, 1998 a 61% majority of California voters elected to impose an
English-only ideology on the public schools by passing Proposition 227.
This law was the "English for the Children"
initiative that banned bilingual education and the use of languages other than English
for instruction in the public schools. Proposition 227 reverses policies set in place in
1967 by then Governor Ronald Reagan that allowed
bilingual instruction as one option for addressing providing limited English proficient
students equal access to the school curriculum. The changes in the education code stemming
from Proposition 227 have brought court action by the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund (MALDEF) and other civil rights groups, claiming that the
law violates the rights of
language minority students to an equal education.
Negative Stereotypes
Proposition 227 was passed following a campaign sponsored and financed
by Official English and other English-only advocates. These groups claimed that bilingual
education poses a threat to the homogeneity of American culture. The campaign was filled
with extreme rhetoric that painted
bilingual educators as "ethnic militants" and "Hispanic
separatists" who were harming language minority students by denying them the
opportunity to learn English. Even the more benign arguments by the supporters of
Proposition 227 characterized bilingual
teachers and administrators as mercenaries who were putting their pocketbooks before
the best interests of children in a battle to keep state funding for bilingual programs.
Lawsuit Provision Against Bilingual Educators
Proposition 227 includes provisions that school officials and teachers can be sued for personal
liability and damages for failing to implement the English-only provisions of the law.
This extreme policy is based on the assumption that resistance to elimination of bilingual
programs would occur based on a rebellious desire to maintain minority cultural
values and language use, even though the electorate finds this goal objectionable. The effect that this
provision and the mandates of Proposition 227 have within
the educational community is to ensure that minority educators will be marginalized in
decision making in the design and implementation of programs that serve minority students.
Demographic Realities
We must examine the assumptions of the English-only
ideology, especially as they apply to today’s social and educational realities.
California is a state with great linguistic and cultural
diversity. A survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau and reported in
the San Diego Union Tribune (Sánchez,
2001, November 24) is testimony to the prevalence of bilingualism in
California. One out of every four
California residents (26%) was born outside the United States and more than
one third of the population (38.6%) speaks a language other than English in
the home. These statistics are mirrored by an equal proportion (25%) of public school students who are classified as limited in English proficiency
(LEP) and fully 38% of all California's public school students who speak a
native language other than English. One out of every three students is
a Spanish/English bilingual learner. Most of these Californians learn to speak English fluently and become fully
assimilated, or Americanized, within two generations. Oftentimes, third generation Mexican
Americans cannot communicate in Spanish with their grandparents. However, more and more
Hispanics today are preserving their bilingual skills because of their continued familial
and economic ties to their countries of origin and because of the advantages of being
bilingual.
A study by the Strategy Research Corporation
(Wheelock, 1999, Nov. 4) of Hispanic households throughout the United States found
that 64% of Hispanics are equally proficient and comfortable using Spanish and English. Assimilation into American culture
is driven by economic and social factors that have little to do with what language
minorities learn, or fail to learn, in public schools.
In spite of the realities of rapid assimilation, advocates of
English-only have convinced a portion of the electorate that unless school children are
denied the use of their native languages for learning to read and write and studying
academic subjects, American culture is
endangered. They believe that the greatest threat comes from granting equal status to
other languages, predominantly Spanish, in a publicly funded institution such as public
schools. English-only advocates claim that giving minority educators decision-making
authority over programs and policies in schools and classroom constitutes a threat to the
power of monolingual teachers, the true representatives of American cultural values. The
assumption, which borders on paranoid, is that bilingual educators must be legally
restrained because their motives and loyalties are suspect. Proposition 227 protects the power of monolingual teachers to
decide how language minority students will be educated, without having to
consider the opinions and values of their bilingual colleagues who have expertise in
language education.
Wayne Cornelius and Ruben Rumbaut with the
UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexico studies (1995) found that there are three distinct
patterns of assimilation for new arrivals from Mexico and Latin American.
One out of every four foreign-born Americans is from Mexico. One pattern
(Group 1) is comprised of new arrivals to the United States who join the large Latino communities in the
urban areas like Los Angeles, often prospering there as part of the
community's economic and social life. These Latinos tend to become
bilingual, but often learn English only to the extent that it serves their
instrumental and practical needs. The bulk of their lives are lived within
the Spanish-speaking community. Their children tend to also become bilingual
in school and remain so, not losing their Spanish because it has enormous
practical benefits and is constantly being refreshed by new arrivals.
The
second pattern (Group 2) is comprised of Latinos who become part of the Anglo middle
class, usually a gradual process that is completed by the second or third
generation. These Latinos tend to lose their Spanish and severe their ties
to their homeland.
The third pattern (Group 3) is the most worrisome--assimilation into an almost permanent
underclass. These Latino youths tend to reject their Mexican roots and rebel
against their parents' cultural and linguistic values. They become
monolingual English speakers, but not proficient enough or well enough
educated in English to advance into the middle class. They get the poorest
level of schooling and often live in separate ghetto-like communities, often
isolated from both the vibrant Latino community and the Anglo community.
Assimilation
means something very different to each of these groups. This explains the
range of opinion on issues such as bilingual education among Latinos. Many
of the members of Group 2 (middle-class, assimilated) tend to say, "We
did it. Why can't they?" The answer is that strong economic and
educational factors determine which group the new arrivals fall into. For
Group 1, the idea of assimilation, certainly as conservatives understand it,
is almost beside the point. They distrust the concept and its supporters out
of fear that it means pressure to give up their ties to Latin America and
their Spanish as a resource for economic advancement. For Group 3, the
concept of assimilation is an empty promise. They got the brutal end of the
"brutal bargain" by sacrificing their cultural identity and ties
to the Spanish-speaking community, getting nothing in return.
The
Second Generation
In an outstandingly thorough and clearly
written book by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut (2001) titled
"Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation"
these sociologists fully describe the experiences of immigrant youth in the
acculturation process. Portes is at Princeton and Rumbaut is at
Michigan State. They have done a masterful job of clarifying the issues
surrounding Proposition 227, bilingual education and
immigrant students.
Portes and Rumbaut document the clear advantages in
school achievement among "fluent bilinguals" as opposed to
immigrant children who are "English-dominant" or "limited
bilinguals." They describe the negative impact of policies that seek to
promote English fluency at any cost, including the stigmatization and loss
of other languages and the sacrifice of valuable linguistic skills, as well
as an increasing distance from parents because of the implicit message to
children that they are carriers of an inferior culture. According to Portes
and Rumbaut, "…forced English immersion promotes dissonant
acculturation with negative consequences that can far exceed the alleged
benefits of such programs."
These authors explain three
distinct patterns of social integration among first and second generation
immigrants based on background factors, intergenerational patterns and
external obstacles. Each of these patterns yields different expected
outcomes. Dissonant acculturation occurs when immigrants confront
discrimination where the messages about one's culture and language are
negative and demeaning. It leads to "downward assimilation" where
immigrants become "trapped" into lower socio-economic, often
segregated, communities and may lead to adversarial attitudes and
lifestyles. Dissonant
acculturation results in a pessimistic view of the individual's
opportunities for upward mobility and diminished ambition and aspirations to
become part of mainstream society.
Contrarily, consonant and selective
acculturation occur when external obstacles to assimilation are met with
family support and countervailing messages about the value of the individual
and his or her language and culture. Selective acculturation occurs when
messages of exclusion and discrimination are filtered through ethnic
networks and confronted with the help of family and community resources and
support that are enhance ambition and higher aspirations through various
modes of social incorporation. Selective acculturation results in upward
assimilation combined with biculturalism.
"Forced march
assimilation" policies that attempt to use the public schools to wipe
out bilingualism such as California's Proposition 227 and Arizona's
Proposition 203 produce resistance and resentment from ethnic communities
that result in more segregation and encapsulation, and thus more
"dissonant acculturation." Today's immigrants from Mexico, Latin
America and the Caribbean are very different from the immigrants who arrived
on Ellis Island in the early part of the century. The social and economic
motivations for immigrants to become integrated into American society and to
learn English are very strong. These will not be weakened by acceptance of
bilingualism and biculturalism in our society. However, prejudice and
discrimination against immigrants who choose bilingualism over English
monolingualism is damaging because it results in policies that are
exclusionary and counterproductive. We must as a nation be open to new modes
of acculturation or risk exacerbating rather than ameliorating the
challenges of our diversity.
The authors point out that
"...from a long-term perspective, policies toward Mexican immigration
advocated by the two mainstream ideologies...verge on the suicidal"
because of the demand for Mexican labor and the heavy discrimination that
result in impoverished barrios of the major urban areas. They speak
eloquently about the need to enlighten the "white middle-class
electorate", the "dominant majority" as to "where its
real self-interests lie in the long run and thus, build a constituency for
an alternative set of policies." Portes and Rumbaut make an excellent
case for the urgency of this effort for the future of our urban centers
where immigrants concentrate and for American society as a whole. The
authors point out that "...from a long-term perspective, policies
toward Mexican immigration advocated by the two mainstream
ideologies...verge on the suicidal" because of the demand for Mexican
labor and the heavy discrimination that result in impoverished barrios of
the major urban areas. They speak eloquently about the need to enlighten the
"white middle-class electorate", the "dominant majority"
as to "where its real self-interests lie in the long run and thus,
build a constituency for an alternative set of policies."
Portes and Rumbaut discuss
the contrasts between the ideology underlying Proposition 187, which they
describe as "intransigent nativism" in contrast with proponents of
"forceful assimilation" embodied in Proposition 227. They say
this:
"Despite being
grounded on thoughtful reflection on immigration history, Unz's Proposition
227 is designed to accomplish exactly the opposite. Despite its moderation,
its vision is ultimately reactionary. It wants an America as it was in the
1920's, a relatively isolated society, not as it must be in the new
millennium, after it successfully emerged as the core of the global system.
In the process, old-line assimilationism undermines the very forces of
parental authority and ambition that can overcome the barriers to successful
adaptation and forge productive and self-respecting citizens out of the new
second generation." (p. 273)
We language minority
educators agree with this assessment of the challenges posed by high levels
of immigration. What is born out by the research is that coercive
policies do not increase the rate of acculturation of immigrants, and in
many ways work against the very kind of consonant and selective
acculturation that produce upward assimilation and integration of immigrants
with each successive generation. We have much more to fear from policies
that send the message that immigrants must renounce their language and
culture and attempt to coerce assimilation than we have to fear from
immigrant communities that are bilingual and bicultural.
Ideological Litmus Test
When viewed critically, it is apparent that the English-only ideology is
nothing more than an elevated conspiracy theory
based on negative stereotypes about bilingual and bicultural individuals. To those who
believe that restrictions on the use of other languages in public schools, bilingualism
implies divided allegiance to conflicting cultural
values and competing lifestyles. Bilingual educators have been unfairly and needlessly
portrayed as espousing beliefs and practices that undermine children’s assimilation
into American culture when they cast other languages and cultures in a positive
light. They have been accused of being "hostile to English" because they wish to
maintain bilingual instruction in the public school. A rejection of a belief in bilingual
education has become an ideological
"litmus test" of language loyalty for educators in the climate created by
the English-only movement during the campaign for Proposition 227.
Guadalupe Valdés (1997) makes some excellent
points that illuminate the controversy over bilingual education. First, she
points out that in the United States the dominant, monolingual population
that has deliberately chosen to mobilize around English as a symbol in order
to revive a one-nation-one-language principle. We must consider how
minimal and reasonable the minority's demands for rights to bilingual education have
always been and really how little the majority population is asked to give
up to allow it to continue. In fact, transitional bilingual education has
always involved using Spanish as a means to an end rather than having the
status of being an end in itself. Yet, even this appears to be too much for
the dominant group to tolerate. Valdés goes on to say this:
…policies--no
matter how benevolent in intention or how naively ignorant--that treat
groups of human beings unjustly are policies that ultimately violate the
individual human rights of those persons who share the particular
characteristics to which the policy in question does not attend. In the
case of bilingual individuals…policies enacted for monolinguals by
monolingual individuals inevitably deprive members of bilingual
populations of essential human rights that no state can be justified in
restricting or violating.
Bilingual education is
something that the minority wants, but the majority seems not to want them
to have it. This is not because they want it for themselves, because for the
most part they don’t. They simply want to make sure that the minority
doesn’t have it. Since the minority benefits from bilingual education
and
it really does no harm to the majority for them to have it, I believe that
ultimately it will be the majority that must concede on this issue. So,
ultimately it is a question of who must give in. If the minority is made to
give in, its real and tangible lose is very great. If the majority gives in,
it looses nothing and gains an indirect benefit by supporting and
accommodating the minority.
See for example the conservative
arguments against bilingual education by Mona Charin in the Washington
Times:
“Liberals like bilingual education for
three reasons: (1) It provides positions for more teachers; (2) it is
perceived as "helping" a minority population; and (3) it denies
that the larger society - mostly white and English speaking - must be
accommodated. “
Charin goes on to say:
“According to the Center for Equal
Opportunity (www.ceousa.org), after two years of English-immersion, limited
English proficient students in California districts that eliminated
bilingual education made huge gains in English reading and writing as well
as in math, compared with those who remained in bilingual classes. If this
trend holds, a great victory for conservatism (to say nothing of the kids)
will have been achieved.”
Click here for a
complete analysis of what the California test
scores really say about the academic achievement of limited English
proficient students. The analysis includes links to the research of
Stanford University Professor Kenji Hakuta, who clearly refutes the claims
of the so-called Center for Equal Opportunity that "English
immersion" has won the race against bilingual education. Suffice it to
say that English-only education has not proven to
be more beneficial than bilingual education and the restrictions and
obstacles to parents' and community's rights to choose bilingual education
are not justified.
Since language is a means
of communication and the reproduction of a collective identity, language
rights are difficult to define and defend as individual rights. Therefore,
we must argue that there are collective linguistic rights at stake in the
battle against 227 and 203 that must gain legal recognition and protection
under our Constitution. Valdés (1997) argues that one of these rights is for
language minority school children to have access to adults committed to
understanding and addressing their unique educational problems (i.e.,
bilingual teachers, administrators, etc.).
Realities of Bilingualism
The reality of bilingualism is contrary to the myth of English-only.
Most bilingual individuals live very comfortably within their different cultural milieus,
without conflicts or stress. In fact, they experience an enriched lifestyle that incorporates diverse
customs and traditions. Bilingual educators are individuals who have achieved the benefits of two languages and cultures. They
are professionals who have achieved high levels of status in American society, benefiting
from the diversity in their backgrounds. Their language skills and cultural knowledge
should be valued rather than denigrated in these times of diversity and change in the
demographic make-up of California. This is especially compelling when we
consider the fact that Spanish
is the third most widely spoken language in the world. Spanish is spoken
in 28 countries around the globe. The United States has the sixth largest Spanish-speaking
population of any country in the world.
In reality, bilingualism is growing because
of strong economic and cultural factors that are far beyond the scope of the
public schools. One of these elements is trade with Latin America. Mexico is
California's number one trading partner, with $15 billion annually in goods
and services exchanged between the two. Along with this amount of trade,
there is the inevitable and mutually beneficial exchange of cultures.
Spanish/English bilingual skills take on a high commercial value and give a
competitive edge to workers in this interdependent economy. There are many
families, and even communities, that maintain what is called a "transnational"
lifestyle, with frequent exchanges and travel between their country
of origin and the United States. This phenomenon is common with immigrants
living along the U.S.A--Mexico border, for example.
Bilingualism is
an asset, and often a requirement, for supervisors and managers who work
with a largely Spanish-speaking workforce in business and industry. Although
English-only restrictions are frequently imposed in work environments, these
rules are largely ineffective. Such policies are often merely a statement
about power relationships within the business and are counter-productive, or
even dangerous, in accomplishing their purposes. Rather than create respect
for higher management and an adherence to an exclusive use of English, these
restrictions damage relationships with workers and cause resistance among
workers to management's "authority."
Linguistic Freedom in a
Democratic Society
The English-only ideology is actually in contradiction with what it
truly means to be an American. Proponents of language restrictions as public
policy demonstrate a lack of
faith in the power of American
democratic ideals of social justice and equality to unite us in a common purpose,
despite our differences. Individual freedoms and the guarantee of rights under our
Constitution transcend our cultural and linguistic origins and practices. We should not
brand bilingual educators as separatists or cultural subversives because they believe that
children can be
taught effectively in their native language while they learn English. In reality, we
should respect their expertise and defer to their commitment to language-minority
students’ effective education.
Fair-minded and intellectually honest voters and those who are
genuinely concerned about equal educational opportunities for all students must reject the
demonization of bilingual educators by the English-only movement to gain a political
advantage and win supporters. Bilingual educators are in fact cultural mediators
who facilitate the assimilation of language minority students, provided they do not work
under the threat of legal liabilities for exercising their professional judgments. The
unifying principles of American democracy must not be set aside in the name of a forced
linguistic unification of our diverse society. Such an ideology is
the real enemy of American culture.
References:
Moran,
R.F. (1995). Bilingual education as a status conflict. In
A. Sedillo López (Ed.). Latino
language and education: Communication
and the dream deferred
(pp.
113-154).
New York, NY: Garland Publishing.
Portes, A. (1995). Segmented assimilation among new immigrant youth: A conceptual
framework. In R. G. Rumbaut & W.A. Cornelius (Eds.), California's Immigrant
Children: Theory, Research, and Implications for Educational Policy, (71-76). San
Diego, CA: University of California Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.
Portes,
A., & Rumbaut, R.G. (2001). Legacies:
The story of the immigrant second generation. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Rumbaut, R. G. (1995). The new Californians: Comparative research findings on
the education progress of immigrant children. In R. G. Rumbaut & W.A. Cornelius, California's
immigrant children: Theory, research, and implications for educational policy, (p.
17-70). San Diego, CA: University of California, San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican
Studies.
Sánchez, L. (2001, November 24). California
is a state of second languages: State's bilingual voice revealed in census
data. San Diego Union Tribune, B-1, B-7.
Torres, C.A. (1998). Democracy, education, and multiculturalism: Dilemmas of
citizenship in a global world. Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Valdés, G. (1997). Bilinguals and
bilingualism: Language policy in an anti-immigrant age. International
Journal of the Sociology of Language, 127, 25-50.
