Bilingual education should not be required in our nation's schools. This does not mean, it should be noted, that foreign language education should be banned, not that supplemental or resource room help in the English language should not be accorded to students who require such assistance. However, bilingual education programs more often than not require a long period of assimilation for students of immigrant status, or parentage, whereby part of the day is taught in English and part of the rest of the day is taught in that student's native language. It is this form of duality of educational environments that must be avoided, so children are not subjected to a further bifurcation of home and American identity, of parental and educational attitudes in culture and in language.
It is argued that it is difficult, and an added burden, for students who speak a different language in the home than English to acquire a level of certain mathematical or scientific proficiency. However, quite often such children's parents do wish them to become assimilated into contemporary American culture and to succeed -- and to succeed in the job market of today requires strong English language skills in a variety of subjects. Moreover, even if bilingual tutoring can be offered, by request, as a form of resource room help, to make required bilingual education for all secondary English speakers a 'must' normalizes ESL as part of a mainstream curriculum, thus creating a lack of an incentive to speak English every day in school.
Bilingual education isolates children, ultimately, within a smaller community than the pluralistic English-speaking environment. ESL rudimentary tutoring can cause a Cambodian and a Dominican immigrant child to bond over the common language they are struggling with -- but a bilingual environment merely creates a comfort zone of language as well as community for children -- but an artificial comfort zone that does not accomplish the ultimate purpose of schooling, to prepare children for the multicultural world of tomorrow.
