Panel bashes English immersion

As the Election Day nears, many educators fear bilingual education will be eradicated if a proposed initiative gains the majority vote.

District 7 City Councilor Chuck Turner, along with educators Berta Berriz and Margaret Adams, spoke on the pros and cons of the “Unz initiative,” named after the California millionaire who originally proposed it, at a Humans Rights Working Group held at the University of Massachusetts at Boston last night.

The three speakers discussed the importance of bilingual education, the problems with the current proposal and the need for immigrant parent involvement in the school system, regardless of citizenship.

Massachusetts voters will be faced with a ballot question that includes plans to create one-year English immersion programs for immigrant students that will replace the gradual approach to bilingual education currently in place. It also includes the ability to sue teachers if they use other languages in the classroom, regardless of the context or duration, according to the educators.

Margaret Adams, the department head for bilingual and English as a Second Language services in Brockton and principal of a two-way learning school, disagreed with several of Unz’s assertions. Bilingual programs do not keep students out of mainstream classrooms, she said, nor will the proposed initiative save Massachusetts money or address fundamental problems with public school education.

In reality, “the average student has completed bilingual education in 2.6 years,” Adams said. “The creation of this new program would cost more. Any new program costs more. More students would slip through one-year immersion, but not be fluent in English. Later down the line, more kids will wind up in special education because the teachers aren’t trained to deal with their language problems.”

Berta Berriz, a Boston Public School teacher who is currently conducting a study on Latino third graders stressed, “bilingual education supports children, and without this they go through a silencing.”

Students are not sufficiently prepared after one year to be part of mainstream education, she explained. Using California’s 91 percent rate of failure with Unz’s initiative as an example, she emphasized most students are not adequately prepared after one year and remain in the one-year immersion program much longer than that.

Both Adams and Berriz explained students in the bilingual program are able to master English and necessary academic concepts with the bilingual transition program.

“Learning any language is boring without something to talk about. In the bilingual program we talk about the magic of science, or history or math while learning English,” Berriz said.

“This initiative is about people furthering their own political agendas, not about children learning English. It is against immigrants and people of color,” Adams said.

This decision, she said, will be made by voters who will not be affected by this proposal.

“Unz exploits deep-seated prejudice of suburban whites,” Turner said.

“We need to look at the broader context to understand the attacks on immigrants, especially those of color. We need to do work to make sure the initiative doesn’t move forward, but win or lose, realize we’re in a critical struggle for values,” Turner said.

Audience member Louise Tillinghast of Somerville said she feels “children need a foundation in their own language first, especially in terms of learning how to read and write.” Giving her own story as an example, she explained why one-year immersion does not do a comprehensive job of educating immigrants.

“I was an exchange student in Bolivia for a year, and was completely immersed without background. There is no way to make the complete transition in a year. Even if a student is conversationally fluent, they may not possess complete literacy,” she said.

UMass faculty members were also in attendance. Estelle Disch, a sociology professor, described one-year immersion as a potential “disaster.”

“It will discourage students,” she said. “They will feel that they aren’t receiving enough support, they’ll drop out, they’ll be emotionally tortured. Depending on how this new system would be framed, the kids may not even be allowed to speak their language in the halls at school,” she said.