The Sociology of Bilingual Education in the United States

Abstract

In the United States of the 1980's bilingual education is beginning to mature, and as an innovation it may be judged, challenged and explained in terms of its sociology. It is becoming apparent that the success or failure of bilingual education as a remedy or an enrichment has to do with sociocultural factors present in the community but outside the control of educators. Fishman (1976) may be quite correct in saying that “the school can provide instructional power for bilingual education but not functional power for it.” Only the local setting can serve its functional needs. In order to focus this inquiry, we begin by asking a question of each local setting to which bilingual education is brought. The question is: “What is the purpose of bilingual education in this community!” The answers we get may be subsumed under four responses: 1) Bilingual education is more equitable for language minority children. 2) Bilingual education is more effective in teaching English. 3) Bilingual education is helpful in attaining functional bilingualism for a language minority group. 4) Bilingual education is helpful in attaining functional bilingualism for all children. In this essay these four responses are discussed.

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