Jennefer Cardenas
Quote and Comment
Chapter 15
The Bilingual Education Act was repealed with hardly a murmur of dissent-and not a single attempt to amend the bill-by Latino members of Congress, every one of whom voted for NCLEB. pg 363
I can see this happening a lot everywhere because people are so afraid of being the only ones feeling different about a subject. Perhaps in this case the people not attempting to amend the bill are not doing anything to keep their job in place. Most of the time you don't want to disagree with the majority because of the position you are in but these people need to take risks to make a difference. These people are in the position they are to represent a minority of people and should do their job adequately. If they are not doing these things what difference does it make to have a Latino member of congress?
The trend in opinion surveys over the past two decades has been towards increasing opposition to native languages in the classroom. pg. 366
I don't understand what all the negativity towards teaching and learning another language in schools is. Wouldn't we want our society to be a bilingual society, to help those people who don't understand English? The more languages we learn the more successful this nation will be. If we could learn multiple languages imagine the doors that would open to such academic achievement. Perhaps because English is the language of business and is a prestigious language all the other tongues are not important enough to learn. I'm not sure I agree though with all the negativity towards becoming a bilingual society.
Press coverage has become a self-reinforcing cycle: journalist disseminate negative messages, which help to shape public attitudes, which lead voters and politicians to adopt anti-bilingual policies, which influence journalist to disseminate more negative messages about bilingual education. Pg. 371
Instead of listening to the media and drawing conclusion from their opinions we should get educated first so we can draw our own conclusions. It becomes so easy to just hear one side sometimes of certain issues and side with that one side. We need to remember that media bias does exist and it is practiced very frequently. We have to remember that journalism primary interest is to cater to popular attitudes and enhance dramatic effect, rather than to foster a broad and balanced understanding of an issue. This is what I’m talking about: getting educated and becoming aware that these biases are attacking our decisions.
“On June 3, 1998, the day after the initiative passed in California, advocated for language-minority students filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to block its implementation. They argued that, by mandating a scientifically untested, one-year immersion program, Proposition 227 would violate the civil rights of English learners under the Castaneda standard." pg 373
I'm very impressed that people would stick up for what they believe. Filing a lawsuit takes a lot of money and effort to do so, these people must have really believed Proposition 227 was a mistake for the students. If only more people would have believed the same. I can't believe people saw Proposition 227 as a benefit for the students. Perhaps there was not a lot of information about the issue or perhaps people didn't take the time to read over the issues. Whatever the reason people voted for Proposition 227 lets thank God that it's over now, for the sake of the students and the teachers.
"To accurately measure the effects on English acquisition and academic achievement, controlled scientific studies will be required; thus far none has been forthcoming." pg 378
It is not fair to state that certain English acquisition programs have not been successful or that others have been more successful than other if there has been no controlled studies being done. Of course there is information of improvements but the most important studies have not even been started. Why have their not been any studies performed yet, is the reason correlated with money issues or having to face issues not ready to face.
According to a survey commissioned by the California legislature, "many principals forced their teachers to box up or discard Spanish-language materials." One educator reported: “To keep from being sued, the district gave teachers a directive of zero percent Spanish use" pg. 379
This is so terrible and incredibly sad. I can say that I want to be a bilingual teacher to teach a portion of the day in Spanish and if this were to happen I don't think I would stick around. How could this have taken place especially with the vagueness of the law's requirements? I believe if there were teachers that truly cared they would have rebelled or rebelled for this to not take place in their schools. I think I’m being a little unreasonable with the teachers because sometimes you just have to follow orders and there is nothing to do.
Often teachers told us that they did not feel good about what they were doing-leapfrogging much of the normal literacy instruction to go directly to English word recognition or phonics bereft of meaning or context. However, they worried greatly that if they spend time orienting the children to broader literacy activities-storytelling, story sequencing activities, reading for meaning or writing and vocabulary development in the primary language-that their students would not be gaining the skills that would be tested on the standardized English test...." pg 380
Teaching to the test is what is going on right here; teachers felt bad for doing it but continued to do it for the sake of passing the standardized English Test. If the students did not pass the test, did teachers get penalized for it? If students did not pass the test did the school get penalized? I have heard and studied that the school does not receive funding if students do not pass the standardized test but I’m not so sure if it's the same for this case.