Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Going Native [John J. Miller]
Jonah: Bilingual education is a misnomer—all too often, it's basically a Spanish-language maintenance program for immigrant children, on the misbegotten theory that they need to develop real competency in their native language before they can branch out into a new one, such as English. Yet when it comes to language, kids are like sponges. Their brains are hardwired to pick it up. There's even a period when they can learn it accent-free, an ability that they lose as they get older. It's all the more reason to teach them as much English early in their lives as possible, even if it's to the detriment of native-language maintenance. One of the sad results of bilingual education is that often leaves kids semi-literate in two languages and fluent in none.
07/09 11:39 AM
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