The political and social history of bilingual education in the United States

Bilingual Education Introduction
North America boasted a wealth of native cultures and languages way before European settlers occupied the continent, bringing with them their cultures, languages, beliefs, traditions, and other European influences. Around 250 to 1000 languages had been spoken in this continent in the fifteenth century before the Europeans first arrived. This is without taking into consideration South and Central America, and Mexico, which would make the entire region's linguistic reality far more diverse. In contrast to contemporary US's popular image as a culture with only one dominant language, namely, English, and dominant White Anglo-Saxon societal traditions, the hopes, desires, and actual lives of innumerable Native Americans have, for long, been sifted through a multilingual prism (Wiley, 2000). This paper examines bilingual education or English as a Second Language education's political and social history within the nation as well as how legislative, political, and social evolution have impacted it.
Despite its rich linguistic and cultural foundation, the founding fathers of America envisaged a nation having an integrated history and traditions, characterized by one single language. The basis of this idea was mostly English schooling and legal systems. Because the history of the US commences with such Anglo-Saxon leanings, European settlers set the scene for symbolic ethnicity and linguistic politics within the nation. The likelihood of controversy surrounding language policy existed right from the outset. Nevertheless, the founding fathers of America declared no official language or government-approved entity for speech regulation in the nation (Ovando, 2003). History of ESL/BLE Education in the US Accompanying the nation's schooling history is a strong history and tradition of native language and bilingual education. It was two centuries ago that the nation's communities first implemented the concept of assembling large numbers of children to educate them. This was typically done in languages besides English, in addition to two or more languages; for instance, Pennsylvania taught in Dutch and German, teaching in Louisiana was mostly French, and Texas State preferred instructing its students in the German and Spanish languages. As observed by Pavlenko (2002) and de Jong (2013), the recognition and adoption of several languages for education and communication purposes suggests a wider linguistic pluralism thought in this era. The above philosophy was manifested by public policy that permitted native language and bilingual instruction, multilingual theatrical productions, and newspaper printing and distribution in several languages. But this era's linguistic pluralism didn't imply equal acceptance of every language; consequently, several Mexican, Native, and Asian American communities witnessed systematic segregation and devaluation of their languages (de Jong, 2013).

Social and Political Perspective Historical records between the 1700s and 1880s indicate that there was quite a reasonable degree of 'benevolent' inattention or tolerance towards the several languages that were represented within modern society, particularly those from northern Europe. Because several diverse population groups made American territory their home, there was a broad sense of psychological and geographical openness. People who disliked their neighbors were free to get up and move away. Owing to a profound sense of identity that arose out of the ancestral language of an individual, several novel migrant communities firmly stuck with their mother tongues when it came to newspapers, religious services, and public and private schools (Ovando, 2003).
Between the 1920s and 1960s, "sink or swim," or English immersion policies, formed the main approach to educating children from linguistic minorities. They were offered no, or only a meager amount of remedial instruction, and frequently had to repeat the same grades until they had acquired sufficient mastery over the English language to progress in comprehending the subject matter. While "English only" continued to be Texas's official instructional approach until the '60s, numerous legal decisions contributed significantly to bilingual education's gradual return.
One approach of bilingual education's initial advocates was applying new concepts of prejudice and poverty to the historical issues experienced by Southwestern schools with Mexican children enrolled in large numbers. As revealed by San Miguel (2004), these advocates contended that social racism, poverty, and discriminatory actions on the part of schools (like school discrimination, structural marginalization, inapt ideas of instruction only in English, and cultural oppression) accounted for Mexican American children's traditional underperformance and disproportionate rates of dropping out of school. Furthermore, Mora et al. (2001) indicate that the bilingual education movement was impacted by evolving belief systems and individual policymakers' linguistic experiences. The major influencers included President Johnson's personal experiences. This ex-president of the United States, in his youth (i.e., during the 1920s), taught at Cotulla, Texas's "Mexican school," using both English and Spanish as his languages of instruction. In the presidential role, Johnson led one among the major bilingual education campaign victories in the nation: the enactment of the 1968 BEA (Bilingual Education Act), which was the 7th Title of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
The 1968 BEA's ratification marked a significant change in tolerance when it came to bilingual education. However, the funds earmarked by the law for bilingual educational initiative development was typically based on a deficient perspective of bilingual learners. The year 1974 saw the historic Lau vs. Nichols American Supreme court case going beyond the BEA to declare that teachers had to deliver affirmative remedial services aimed at focusing, especially on linguistically deprived learners. This victory coerced school administrations into deliberating on and dealing with their growing bilingual student population in ways they had never done previously (Gándara, Moran, & Garcia, 2004).
While the aforementioned court ruling legalized bilingual education through altering instruction in case of the linguistically diverse population from a mere alternative to being made compulsory, Wright (2010) observes advocacy for this instructional approach in other major Texan cases as well. The US v. Texas (1971, 1981) case ruling called for district formulation of a strategy and implementation of language courses geared at facilitating English language learning and adaptation to mainstream American culture on the part of Mexican American learners, and at facilitating Spanish language learning by Anglo students. Likewise, the San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez case had major consequences for bilingual education financing when the petitioners claimed schools that catered largely to a minority student population were provided with lesser funds as compared to those catering largely to White students. While this case was fought by using Amendment XIV's Equal Protection Clause as its main argument, the Supreme Court ruling here was that the US Constitution did not declare and guarantee education as a fundamental right.
Bilingual education rights were adversely impacted by the Castañeda v. Pickard Texan case (Wright, 2010). Here, complainants claimed the Raymondville Independent School District didn't cater to ELLs' (English language learners) unique requirements mandated under the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA). The federal-level court overlooked the previous assumption of the above Act and the Lau case mandating bilingual education. Still, they held that the District did fall far short when it came to satisfying EEOA requirements. One key result of the case was: a three-pronged assessment for ascertaining whether or not schools take proper action for handling ELLs' needs under EEOA (Wright, 2010). Under the "Castañeda standard," it is mandatory for language minority student programs to be (1) grounded in a robust educational theory; (2) adequately put into practice with appropriate and enough human and other resources, and (3) assessed for ascertaining whether or not they succeed at aiding learners in surmounting linguistic barriers. Bilingual education's continuous, historic legal struggle encompasses numerous unsuccessful legal battles by those advocating making English America's "official language"; according to Crawford (2004), in the year 1981, the US Congress did consider doing so. Californian Senator S. I. Hayakawa was responsible for putting forth this suggestion, claiming multilingual ballots and continued bilingual education within public schools could divide the nation based on language (Crawford, 2004). While this proposal only reached the hearing step and was never voted on by the Congress, the author reveals that as many as 23 states passed some or other kind of "Official English" law.
In the dismissive stage, the discussion on how many years of native language learning to provide before transferring linguistic minority students to all-English classrooms spiked. This controversy reached unprecedented levels when California State decided, in its 1998 Proposition 227 enactment via voting, that English ought to be the main instructional language for linguistic minorities. This proposition wreaked havoc on bilingual programs statewide, with ELLs now receiving far less help as compared to previously in their mother tongues. Bilingual educators, university professors, program directors, and research scholars in the field of bilingual education now had to work with an educational program that they didn't believe in.