Lacy Adorante 09/06/2013 tape 3: Response Mary Downing MW

After watching the videos on the hybrid activities for this chapters section and reading the passage in the book about bilingual cultures I have furthered my already existent beliefs on the subject. I think that both preserving traditions and linguistic heritage and assimilating to the dominant culture are equally important in any culture. If both of these things are done there can be a balance in the country that will allow for everyone to make their own advancements and gain respect for other cultures while continuing to develop the native language of the U.S. and gain more respect for it as well. Bilingual education has both benefits and disadvantages. One of the specific benefits of bilingual education in school revolves around the fact that as mentioned in the video about the school systems outside of Washington D.C., children under eight years old are language learning machines. These young children, especially those who speak a second language from English at home as their first language will immediately be given a way to relate to their other classmates who may speak English as a first language. In turn, developing relationships in school may cause students to succeed who may not have had a decent chance before to advent of bilingual education. One specific disadvantage of bilingual education is that older students who are just now being introduced to it could have a hard time learning

and being able to catch on as well as those students who natively speak, for example, Spanish. This is not to say that the reverse does not happen every day to someone in school who speaks Spanish as a native language in schools, but living in The United States, the prevalent language that is the language of this country is English, and therefore, in my opinion English should always be spoken first. Many benefits come out of speaking monolingual languages in the countries where they are native such as French in France and English in the United States. One specific benefit of monolingual education is that each country can spend plenty of time developing and perfecting their native language and really study and learn to respect the history of the language. In detail, it allows for those studying it to dive in depth into that one specific language. Something that can be seen as a disadvantage of not using bilingual education is the lack of worldliness that is created when a student recognizes and respects other languages. Opening students minds to new things allows for broadened perspectives and smarter minds. In the Francophone world, there is debate over whether French or the regional or native language should be used in education. In my opinion, using both would allow for the before mentioned broadening perspectives. In the video about the schools outside of Washington D.C., the schools spend half of the day working in Spanish and the other half in English. I think that this system would work well in the Francophone countries. It would allow them to respect their native languages and further their knowledge of those, and it would also allow them to learn French, which they surely would hear and use constantly in their daily lives as a Francophone country.

Schools in the United States should provide education in English. This is not to say that Spanish could be studied beginning at a young age as another subject I the curriculum, but having American children complete school in only Spanish does not seem right to me. I think that it would be a learning and growth experiment for all United States schools to have some type of foreign language initiated into instruction at some point. This would require much planning though, in the fact that teachers would need to be hired with knowledge of the foreign language as well as qualifications for instruction on every other level. I think that this would be the most difficult part about the advent of required foreign language learning. If started at a young enough age though, students learning another language could possibly help with instructional development. If I were to plan a school curriculum, I would plan core subjects in English. Some learners struggle enough with subjects such as math, reading, science, and history enough in English, and adding a language barrier to that would allow those students to struggle more. This could lead to a drop in achievement in United States schools. It would be useful and unique to have a foreign language classes as electives like it is done in high school so that children are exposed to new things. In my opinion though, core subject instruction should be completed in English in the United States.