Bilingual Education is Beneficial

Bilingual education has been a controversial issue for many years. The question of whether or not to provide lessons in a student’s native language while they learn English is an issue that many have taken an interest in. The article “Bilingual Education Is Beneficial” by Ofelia Garcia points out many reasons to keep these programs. She says that, “well-planned bilingual education programs that emphasize fluency in both English and Spanish enable Hispanic immigrants to excel academically.” Moreover, she says that bilingual education for all students would benefit our society because we would be “enhancing communication and understanding among different ethnicities and language groups.” One of the main points the opposition brings up is that Hispanics have the highest high school dropout rate among every other race group. They point to bilingual education as one of the reasons, and say that because the students learn primarily in their native language, they do not learn English fast enough, and therefore do not excel in school. However, maybe the problem is not that they are learning in their primary language, it is what they are learning. Many immigrants, especially those from poorer and less-educated countries, do not have sufficient reading and writing skills in their native language. As a result of this, they have to first improve their basic language skills in their native tongue before they can begin to learn a whole new language.

Sorry, this is all I have so far. I still have more work to do on it.