Posted on 04/25/2018 11:23:12 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Only 5 states have policies in place for strong, bilingual public pre-K programs, which greatly benefit children, especially from low-income families.
Karla Medina-Gomez was worried as she prepared to enroll her two oldest children in a state-funded pre-K program around eight years ago.
“One of my first questions when I went to register them was: ‘Well, what’s going to happen? They don’t know how to speak English,’” recalled the mother of four, born and raised in Newark, New Jersey.
Medina-Gomez, whose parents emigrated from Ecuador, said her two oldest, grew up in their home speaking only Spanish. But she also knew the importance of exposing them to English-language instruction at an early age.
Her two oldest, now 12 and 13, were fortunate — their pre-K had bilingual teachers and aides, and the classroom included objects labeled in English, Spanish and Portuguese (commonly spoken in Newark), which helped ease their linguistic transition. She credits the pre-K for her children's current academic success.
“Had they not gone to preschool and maybe started kindergarten, I’m sure they probably would have been more ESL,” said Medina-Gomez, referring to English as a Second Language instruction.
Children who attend pre-K are more ready for school at the end of that year, particularly in literacy and math, than those who don’t got to pre-K, according to a 2017 report by a task force from the Brookings Institution, the Washington think tank, and Duke University.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
This mother born and raised in Newark, has kids who don’t speak English? Does she herself speak English? But she was born and raised in America? Something doesn’t add up.
Total immersion works a helluva lot better for those learning a foreign language.
Trouble is that when they get to our public screwels, they’d be “taught” by teachers who can hardly speak English, much less a foreign language.
Let’s put it in perspective. Maybe it does work but is it essential?
Queer studies works also in kindergarten.................
I get the pint of transitioning to English eventually, but this is a band aid. The problem is the burden that is created vs the advantages we gain as a nation from wide open borders and weak citizenship process.
Borders, Language, Culture.
Here in Eastern Oregon, there’s areas where you won’t hear a word of English spoken, including the local schools. The local employers don’t want any of them learning to speak English, and carefully choose the bilingual foremen and bosses to enforce this unwritten rule.
Yep. Why cater to them?
Of course, being bi-lingual or tai-lingual is a good thing (and I wish I was). Linguists say your mouth muscles haven’t “frozen” until about age 11 or 12 and before that age you can learn another language without any accent.
My Dad arrived from Germany in 1927 when he was 3. He had an older brother and sister with Mom and Dad. For Dad, it was learn English via total immersion or get beat up every day on the streets of NYC. His English was so good that you’d never know that Dad only spoke German through age 3 (of course, the typical 3 year old has a 200 or more word vocabulary and speaks in three- or four-word sentences).
Bilingual Education is one of the biggest frauds and money-drains in our educational systems.
Interesting. I’m surprised to hear that’s true in Eastern Oregon. That would make sense in California’s Central Valley. What are the employer’s trying to prevent?
B effing S!!
we have a grammar school in our district that teaches in dual language...we also had a disastrous PreK program that was bi-lingual...
this particular grammar school tests the WORST of any grammar school in the district, far and away...the dual language zealots are determined to keep the program while other parents are desperate to get their kids out of the school..
If I had ended up having kids I would darn well want them to grow up speaking three languages at least. Lots of evidence that not only can they learn several languages as easily as one when young but also that it stimulates other mental growth. A friend from college paid SERIOUS bucks for a tri-lingual nanny (Chinese and French plus British English)... he and his wife consider it well worth the $100K over a few years.
When he was a kid, a friend of ours was a beneficiary or President Reagan’s amnesty. His father wanted him to learn English, going so far as to having him repeat a grade in school. When we went to his college graduation we were shocked at the left-wing political nature of the “Hispanic” convocation. This was 20 years ago.
He became a school teacher. After his first year of working with high school kids — who spoke little English — I asked him if he thought his first year was a success. He was emphatic: it was. He admitted that the kids had progressed little in their command of English or in actual scholastic knowledge, but he was able to instill in them pride about themselves and their race.
Schools should teach in English only.
Yep. I like to use reality tests when confronted with these kinds of issues. Here is the Bilingual Education Reality Test: If your pay depended upon how much English the kids actually learned, what method would you use?
Why didn’t the Democrats mandate total immersion multicultural pre-K back when they had total control of the Congress and the White House, back in 2009-2010?
A great deal of migrant workers come up here from mexico, and further south every spring. Most leave at the end of the season, but some decide to stick around. Those that stick around make a bee line straight to the social services, and load up on all of the government benefits that are designed especially for them. A trip to the DMV later, and they can move about with impunity. Some farms and ranches use this as a form of subsidized labor, but most don’t anything to do with that. The ones that stay refuse to assimilate, for obvious reasons, and the bleeding heart leftists oblige them with welfare benefits and protected status.
And of course there’s the drug trafficking angle.
The idea of maintaining the language barrier is to make in no uncertain terms that they are guest workers, and are expected to head home at the end of the season. The ones that stay act as an anchor, or as a foot in the door for migrant workers to become illegals. Also, the drug cartels exploit this.
A family friend’s 7 year old learned Spanish and Mandarin off of an ipad during commute time. Total of about an hour a day. Cracks me up when we go out for Chinese food and she orders for all of us in Mandarin.
Now is this public “education” for children of illegals or what? I’m guessing this is about getting more government funding since they’re claiming it works. It disturbs me how many people are ok with handing their children over to strangers at such early ages.
not surprising - how many households in Calif don’t speak English? something around 40%? 50%? And we’ve had bilingual ed for 30 some years. Bilingual teaches English-speakers to speak Spanish. Vice-versa, not so much - because it’s not used in the home, work or social settings. And why should they? In some parts of Calif, (cough SoCal, cough Central Valley) cough cough) if you can’t speak Spanish you don’t get a job, so there’s absolutely no incentive to speak English in California. And if you can claim not to speak English, you automatically get out of jury duty, and in any other case, you get special treatment., ie. personal translators compliments of the taxpayers.
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