Bilingual Education is Important

                Bilingual education continues to receive criticism in the national media. This Digest examines some of the criticism, and its effect on public opinion, which often is based on misconceptions about bilingual education's goals and practice. The Digest explains the rationale underlying good bilingual education programs and summarizes research findings about their effectiveness. People in today's society have opposite opinions on how to approach the issue of bilingual education. Basically, the sides are split on the issue of teaching bilingual education in Indonesian’s schools. There are many excellent points and arguments for each side of the tape. Personally, I chose to believe that we should keep bilingual education out of the Indonesian education because we need to learn and know English. Bilingual education is considered as one of the hottest issues in the country of Indonesia. there are some individuals who want their children not to learn English language. However, the existence of bilingual education plays a vital role in most of the children in the country of Indonesia since bilingual education will help them know English language better aside from the usual language they use in writing and communicating. (Smith, 1994) said that it is easier to learn to read in a language we understand. Once we can read in one language, we can read in general. Therefore, bilingual education is can provide surprising, long-lasting benefits.

Bilingual Education is knowledge. When schools provide children quality education in their primary language, they give them two things: knowledge and literacy. The knowledge that children get through their first language helps make the English they hear and read more comprehensible. Literacy developed in the primary language transfers to the second language. The reason is simple because we learn to read by reading--that is, by making sense of what is on the page. When a student learns new information in a language that he does not understand, he will not be receiving any comprehensible input. However, if the teacher provides instruction in the student's native language, it gives the student knowledge. This knowledge helps make the students to learn English language much more comprehensible. When the students already get the knowledge it will be easier for them to use it and practice it to the native speaker. Bilingual education that caters to immigrant students creates a problem for those students. Instead of learning the dominant language of the new country, the students are more likely to continue to rely mostly on their native language. Relying too much on an old language and not learning the primary language of a new country is a way that people resist assimilation. Single language instruction of a new student is more likely to produce someone who will have an easy time integrating into society. However, nowadays is a modern era, people who cannot speak English well will live behind. Bilingual Education must be the top priority to obtain the accountability standards. It is a fact that most of the students who are part of bilingual education have the ability to learn a wide variety of English language training as well as the other foreign language that are being use all around the globe.

            Bilingual education makes students become confidence. Although this may be considered as a subjective factor to use as supporting evidence, confidence can be seen as another reason why bilingual education is a positive asset to the educational system. It can be said that this system gives an extra boost of self-confidence to students participating in that program. Crawfrod (1989) & Cummins (1984) said that Bilingual education can have a positive effect on a student's confidence and self-esteem because it stresses the importance of a student's background knowledge and allows the student to use this knowledge by integrating it into their daily learning. One of the reasons that some students are unable to achieve full fluency in a second language is because they are afraid to make mistakes which might result in embarrassing themselves and being laughed at by their friends. A self-confident, secure person will be able to learn language more successfully.

            On the other hand, some people believe that Bilingual Education is not time efficient. Opponents of bilingual education are saying that it is not time efficient because it takes too long for students to gain proficiency in English through the bilingual education program because they tend to want to fall back on their native language, refusing to learn English and know into the mainstream. However, that statement is not use. Research has shown that a person who learns to speak and understand a second language fluently can learn additional languages much faster. This is extremely beneficial for worldwide communication and opportunities. Bilingual education is grounded in common sense, experience, and research. Common sense says that children will not learn academic subject material if they can't understand the language of instruction. Experience documents that students from minority-language backgrounds historically have higher dropout rates and lower achievement scores. Finally, there is a basis for bilingual education that draws upon research in language acquisition and education. Research done by Jim Cummins, of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, supports a basic tenet of bilingual education: children's first language skills must become well developed to ensure that their academic and linguistic performance in the second language is maximized. Cummins's developmental interdependence theory suggests that growth in a second language is dependent upon a well-developed first language, and his thresholds theory suggests that a child must attain a certain level of proficiency in both the native and second language in order for the beneficial aspects of bilingualism to accrue. Cummins also introduced the concept of the common underlying proficiency.

Opponents of bilingual education tell us that the public is against bilingual education. This impression is a result of the way the question is asked. One can easily get a near-100-percent rejection of bilingual education when the question is biased. Porter (1990), for example, states that "Many parents are not committed to having the schools maintain the mother tongue if it is at the expense of gaining a sound education and the English-language skills needed for obtaining jobs or pursuing higher education" (p. 8). Who would support mother tongue education at such a price?

However, when respondents are simply asked whether or not they support bilingual education, the degree of support is quite strong: From 60-99 percent of samples of parents and teachers say they support bilingual education (Krashen, 1996). In a series of studies, Shin (Shin, 1994; Shin & Gribbons, 1996) examined attitudes toward the principles underlying bilingual education. Shin found that many respondents agree with the idea that the first language can be helpful in providing background knowledge, most agree that literacy transfers across languages, and most support the principles underlying continuing bilingual education (economic and cognitive advantages).

The number of people opposed to bilingual education is probably even less than these results suggest; many people who say they are opposed to bilingual education are actually opposed to certain practices (e.g., inappropriate placement of children) or are opposed to regulations connected to bilingual education (e.g., forcing teachers to acquire another language to keep their jobs).

Despite what is presented to the public in the national media, research has revealed much support for bilingual education. McQuillan and Tse (in press) reviewed publications appearing between 1984 and 1994, and reported that 87 percent of academic publications supported bilingual education, but newspaper and magazine opinion articles tended to be antibilingual education, with only 45 percent supporting bilingual education. One wonders what public support would look like if bilingual education were more clearly defined in such articles and editorials.

There are numerous studies that document the effectiveness of bilingual education. One of the most notable was the eight-year (1984-1991) Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early-Exit and Late-Exit Programs for Language-Minority Children. The findings of this study were later validated by the National Academy of Sciences. The study compared three different approaches to educating LEP students where the language of instruction was radically different in grades one and two. One approach was structured immersion, where almost all instruction was provided in English. A second approach was early-exit transitional bilingual education, in which there is some initial instruction in the child's primary language (thirty to sixty minutes per day), and all other instruction in English, with the child's primary language used only as a support, for clarification. However, instruction in the primary language is phased out so that by grade two, virtually all instruction is in English. The third approach was late-exit transitional bilingual education, where students received 40 percent of their instruction in the primary language and would continue to do so through sixth grade, regardless of whether they were reclassified as fluent-English-proficient.

Although the outcomes were not significantly different for the three groups at the end of grade three, by the sixth grade late-exit transitional bilingual education students were performing higher on mathematics, English language, and English reading than students in the other two programs. The study concluded that those students who received more native language instruction for a longer period not only performed better academically, but also acquired English language skills at the same rate as those students who were taught only in English. Furthermore, by sixth grade, the late-exit transitional bilingual education students were the only group catching up academically, in all content areas, to their English-speaking peers; the other two groups were falling further behind.

It is sometimes claimed that research does not support the efficacy of bilingual education. Its harshest critics, however (e.g., Rossell & Baker, 1996), do not claim that bilingual education does not work; instead, they claim there is little evidence that it is superior to all-English programs. Nevertheless, the evidence used against bilingual education is not convincing. One major problem is in labeling. Several critics, for example, have claimed that English immersion programs in El Paso and McAllen, Texas, were shown to be superior to bilingual education. In each case, however, programs labeled immersion were really bilingual education, with a substantial part of the day taught in the primary language. In another study, Gersten (1985) claimed that all-English immersion was better than bilingual education. However, the sample size was small and the duration of the study was short; also, no description of "bilingual education" was provided. For a detailed discussion, see Krashen (1996).

On the other hand, a vast number of other studies have shown that bilingual education is effective, with children in well-designed programs acquiring academic English at least as well and often better than children in all-English programs (Cummins, 1989; Krashen, 1996; Willig, 1985). Willig concluded that the better the experimental design of the study, the more positive were the effects of bilingual education.

            There are many people who are opposed to the bilingual education system for various reasons such as the effectiveness, lack of qualified teachers and many others. However, studies prove that bilingual education is actually a better educational system for the students' language and academic learning. Instead of putting students in an Indonesian-only or using local language atmosphere and forcing them to learn a new language, it is better to provide this new information in a language that the student can understand. Bilingual education offers great opportunities to both language-majority and language-minority populations. It is an educational approach that not only allows students to master academic content material, but also become proficient in two languages–an increasingly valuable skill in the early twenty-first century.

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NANCY F. ZELASKO

By: Tisyrinul Awwal Fatiani

Final Project Essay