Bilingual education is a broad term that refers to the presence of two languages in instructional settings. The term is, however, “a simple label for a complex phenomenon” that depends upon many variables, including the native language of the students, the language of instruction, and the linguistic goal of the program.
Students may be native speakers of the majority language or a minority language. The student’s native language may or may not be used to teach content material. Bilingual education programs can be considered either additive or subtractive in terms of their linguistic goals, depending on whether students are encouraged to add to their linguistic repertoire or to replace their native language with the majority language.
Statistical Analysis on Bilingual Education
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proficiency in only one language was not enough for economic, societal, and educational success. Global interdependence and mass communication often require the ability to function in more than one language.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, more than 9.7 million children ages five to seventeen–one of every six school-age children–spoke a language other than English at home. These language-minority children are the fastest-growing segment of the school-age population. Between 1990 and 2000, the population of language-minority children increased by 55 percent, while the population of children living in homes where only English is spoken grew by only 11 percent.
Benefits of Bilingual Education Around the World
It is estimated that between 60 and 75 percent of the world is bilingual. And bilingual education is a common educational approach used throughout the world. It may be implemented in different ways for majority and/or minority language populations. And there may be different educational and linguistic goals in different countries. In Canada, immersion education programs are designed for native speakers of the majority language (English). To become proficient in a minority language (French). Whereas heritage-language programs are implemented to assist native speakers of indigenous and immigrant languages to become proficient in English.
Despite myths to the contrary, non-native English speakers neither learned English very quickly nor succeeded in all-English schools. A comparison of the high-school entry rates based on a 1908 survey of public schools shows. For example, that in Boston, while 70 percent of the children of native whites entered high school. Only 32 percent of the children of non-native English-speaking immigrants did so.
However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, one could easily find a good job that did not require proficiency in English.
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