Bilingual education concepts and outcomes

Bilingual Education

Predicting the effect of bilingual education on student outcomes with the work done by Huddy and Sears, "Opposition to Bilingual Education: Prejudice or the Defense of Realistic Interests?" is problematical. The authors investigated the bases for parental prejudice against bilingual education; they did not investigate in any detail what the educational outcomes might be for the children involved. They made only incidental reference to the possibility that Latino, African-American or other minority students -- or even Anglos -- might experience diminished educational outcomes in the presence, or for that matter absence, of bilingual education. In fact, they were not investigating outcomes per se; they were investigating the source of prejudice.

Huddy and Sears proposed that current prejudice against bilingual education is of two kinds. One kind is the realistic interest variety. Those who practice this form of prejudice believe that spending money on bilingual education to serve Latinos does a disservice to the education of non-Latinos by shifting funds that would otherwise be available to enrich English-language education. The second form is some variety of old-fashioned racial prejudice, whether based on externals (Blacks/Latinos/etc.) do not do well because they were prevented from getting an education) to internals (Blacks, Latinos, etc.) do not do well because they are lazy and do not want to work hard.

At the outset, Huddy and Sears note that extending the concept of realistic interest to Latinos seems inevitable in face of the current moves toward restricting access to public services such as education for illegal aliens, most of whom are Latino. In other words, Anglos fear that the dollars for education are ill spent in providing Spanish-language instruction, especially for students who may have no bona fide right to any education in the U.S. On further investigation, Huddy and Sears noted that this attitude was most prevalent among Anglos and African-Americans who were living in the same areas as the Latinos, whether or not their children were in bilingual classes. Arguably, in those areas, education in general is not on a par with completely Anglo middle-class areas.

Huddy and Sears did expend some effort on tracing the origins of prejudice, and this work seems more likely to shed some light on the possible educational outcomes of bilingual education than does much of the rest of their study. They noted that social learning explanation of prejudice "argues that the effective base of prejudice is acquired early in life as part of childhood socialization" (p. 136). They found that this transmittal vector for negative attitudes toward other ethnic groups, and the stereotypes it engendered, was still intact. Further, they discovered that it transcended the three possible bases for prejudice: education, linguistic and economic threat. Some combination of these was found to be present in all the groups that opposed bilingual education.

Huddy and Sears concluded that the deepest opposition to bilingual education resulted from perceived realistic interest. They found that both parents and non-parents who perceived that programs were in competition for limited resources for education were most likely to oppose bilingual education. In addition, they noted that those parents who believed bilingual education was not of benefit to their children also opposed it.

Their most significant finding was that "Opposition to bilingual education programs was greater among Anglos who felt economically threatened by Latinos" (p. 141). It is significant, but not surprising. Moreover, by itself, it does nothing to predict educational outcomes for students in bilingual education. Nothing in the study did that. However, interpreting the work in light of basic concepts of human behavior makes a few things very probable. First, if parents are in opposition to a program, their children will be likely to acquire their views; Huddy and Sears did note that attitudes were still transmitted during childhood socialization. Second, if one holds a negative view toward something, one will not embrace and benefit from it. This makes the entire matter into a self-fulfilling prophecy; the parents do not believe bilingual education is helpful and thereby bring about the result that it is not. It would be surprising if the results were as good as they might be in a situation in which bilingual education was embraced.