Bilingual Educatio

8 Pages 2025 Words

Native Americans. “The early period of bilingual education is the United States (1840-1920) produced no widely accepted curricular model. Successful programs resulted when the program director was a strong perceptive leader with authority to select good teachers and to supervise them closely”(Andersson 46). In 1664, at least eighteen languages were spoken on Manhattan Island (Crawford), and the immigrants who came to America wanted to keep their heritage and be able to enjoy their own religion, culture, and language. They were looking for a place where their ethnic identity would not be endangered. The “mother tongue” was very important to the settlers of the new land, and they were willing to learn rather than replace. With this in mind, John Adams proposed to establish and American Language Academy in 1780 simply for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue but was ignored by the Continental Congress. The framers of the US Constitution believed, that in a democracy, language choices should be left up to people. Schools were established with vernacular education as the rule, and the language used was not an issue (Crawford).
Bilingualism was common among all classes of society in the middle colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Newspaper advertisements made form frequent references to the bilingual and trilingual proficiencies of the black and white runaway servants (Crawford). Important government documents were printed in other languages in the 1700’s, yet today it is said that print in other languages is too time consuming and cost ineffective. Does that mean that even with today’s technology, people are afraid of a little extra work and that money is more important than effective communication?
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