ED 095 100

DOCUHENT RESUME

95 SP 008 277

AUTHOR Tobier, Arthur, Ed.TITLE Teaching Bilingual Children.INSTITUTION City Univ. of New York, N.Y. City Coll. Workshop

Center for Open Education.SPONS AGENCY Ford Foundation, New York, P.Y.; Office of Education

(DREW), Washington, D.C.; Rockefeller Bros. Fund, NewYork, N.Y.

PUB DATE Jun 7LNOTE 58p.; Part of a series of position papers, curriculum

bulletins;, and occasional papers that will bepublished periodically by the Workshop Center forOpen Education

AVAILABLE nom Workshop Center for Open Education, 6 Shepard Hall,City College, Convent Avenue and 140th Street, NewYork, New York 10031 ($2.00)

"EDRS PRICE MF-$0.75 HC-$3.15 PLUS POSTAGEDESCRIPTORS *Bilingual Education; *Bilingual Students; Reading

Instruction; *Teaching; *Teaching Methods

ABSTRACTIn his brief introduction, the editor states that

this collection of writings is intended to assist the understandingof a childos language development as he masters his mother tongue. Itis especially for teachers just beginning in bilingual education. Thepredominance of essays on the experiences of Spanish-speaking peoplein this collection is because these writings are more readilyavailable and not that they are thought more valid than othermaterial. Included in this collection are a strategy for bilingualeducation, an essay on learning to read in a bilingual context, anexcerpt from the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights report entitled"Toward Quality Education for Mexican Americans, "an essay "AFramework for Implementing Bilingual Education," excerpted fron areport by the National Puerto Rican Developtent and TrainingInstitute, and other pieces that represent the experiences ofstudents and teachers. (JA)

hildrEdited by Arthur Tobier

U DE PARTME NT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION A WELFARENATIONAL INSTITUTE OF

EDUCATIONTHIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROMTHE.PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATINO IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONSSTATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFEDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY

'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPY.RIGHTED MAT IAL HAS BEEN ANTED r

TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONSOPERATING

UNDER AGREEMENTS WITHTHE NATIONAL IN.

STITUTE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRO.DUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYS+EM RE-QUIRES PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHTOWNER

PUBLISHED BY THE WORKSHOP CENTER FOR OPEN EDUCATION, 6 SHEPAliD HAIL, CITY COLLEGE

140TH STREET AND CONVENT AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 10031

June 1974

This paper is part of a series of position papers,curriculum bulletins, and occasional papers thatThe Workshop Center for Open Education will publishperiodically on subjects relating to open educationin the public schools.

The Workshop Center for Open Education is supported bya grant from the United States Office of Educationunder Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Act of1965, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller BrothersFund, and City College. It operates in conjunctionwith the City College Advisory Service to Open Corri-dors. The Center Staff includes Georgia Delano,Coordinator; David Bole, Marian Brooks, Bonnie Brownstein,Stanley Chu, Jean Mandelbaum, Martha A. Norris, Etta'Proshansky, Evangeline Richardson, Nancy Schaffer, LorenWeybright, Advisors; Ruth Dropkin, Arthur Tobier, Editors;and Lillian Weber, Director.

Requests for information and publications should beaddressed to The Workshop Center for Open Education,Room 6, Shepard Hall, City College, Convent Avenue at140th Street, New York, NY 10031.

Copyright 0 1974 by the Workshop Center for OpenEducation. All rights reserved.

'italic inI inn .alEdited by Arthur Tobier

PUBLISHED BY THE WORKSHOP CENTER FOR OPEN EDUCATION, 6 SHEPARD HALL, CITY COLLEGE140TH STREET AND CONVENT AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 10031June 1974

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ContentsA NECESSARY STRATEGY 3

Rupert Trujillo

A LANGUAGE OF SOFT VOWELS 7

Oscar Zeta Acosta

CLASSROOMS AND STREETS: SOME COMPARISONS 9John Macnamara

IN THE CHINATOWN GHETTO 15Stanley Chu

NEW YORK CITY PERSPECTIVE 17Luis Mercado

OBSERVATIONS AT P.S. 75 22Vera John

CRESCENCIA 26Excerpted from Fourth Street i

LEARNING TO READ IN A BILINGUAL CONTEXTRuth AdamsLillian Lerner

28

SOME HISTORY 32Stan Steiner

EN ESPANOL 35Excerpted from Spicy Meatball

PRIONSIAS O'MIANAIN 36Eamonn McCann

THE BILINGUAL CURRICULUM: WHAT IS IT?Excerpted from the U.S. Commission onCivil Rights report; Toward Quality

Education for Mexican Americans

GUASABARARalph Co%lazo

A FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTING BILINGUALEDUCATION

Excerpted from a report by theNational Puerto Rican Developmentand Training Institute

MY UNCLEBaltazar Montec

37

43

45

54

We find our identities through our language. Thatlanguage must uphold us, give us confidence, tell uswe belong to our world and each other. We becomeabsurd when our language divides us from our world(and when our world divides us from our language),divorces us from our surroundings and our fellows,and makes us speak of foreign things as if they werefamiliar. As Ralph Ellison has stated: "One usesthe language which helps to preserve one's life, whichhelps to make one feel at peace with the world, whichscreens out the greatest amount of chaos." Peopleconcerned with children's development and with design-ing school programs are just at the beginning stagesof understanding tbe processes of language develop-ment; the beginning stages of understanding how chil-dren master their mother tongue and how it is andshould be used in school. In publishing this col-lection of writings, the Workshop Center hopes to cddto that understanding, as well as help teachers, par-ticularly those just beginning in bilingual education,to see the value of making connections between lan-guage and experience and to become sensitive to therich cultural, historical, and emotional basis oflanguage.

A final note of qualification. While the articleschosen to be included in this publication lean heavilyon the experiences of Spanish-speaking people, that hasmostly to do with the fact that the material was morereadily available than writings focusing on the experi-ences of other ethnic groups; it is not to suggest thatthese experiences are any more valid. The fact is thatin their underlying concern with the basic issues ofbilingualism these experiences are fairly typical, andthey have been used interchangeably in this publicationto offer as full and meaningful a discussion as possible.They are cases in point.

Nor is this publication meant to be objective. Theexperiences described speak for themselves. They arefar more valid than any objective notion we can claimto make.

Arthur Tobier

A necessary strategyRupert Trujillo

Much is being said and written aboutbilingual, bicultural education. I

don't intend to go into elaboratedefinitions about the concept. Ra-ther, I want to briefly state whatbilingual, bicultural education isnot.

It is not a process that treats thechild as if somehow he is deficient.

It is not a process whose only andultimate objective is to perfect theuse of the English language.

It is not a process that ignores thechild's background and cultural heri-tage.

It is not a process which considersonly one way of living and behavingas legitimate.

And finally, it is not a processwhich assumes that education is a

- privilege.

Bilingual, bicultural educationserves a number of positive pur-poses for American Public Educationand is therefore seen as a neces-sary educational strategy.

1. It enriches and preserves thecultural and human resources of apeople and, consequently, a country.

This is excerpted from a paper pre-sented at the National Bilingual Bi-cultural Institute held in Albuquer-que, New Mexico, November, 2973.

2, It creates better human relation-ships among people from differingbackground.

3. It launches a child immediatelyinto a world of learning as opposedto a world of confusion and frustra-tion.

4. It creates for the child an atmos-phere of personal identification,self-worth, and achievement.

A quote from Margaret Nick, a NativeAmerican from Alaska, seems appro-priate at this point. She says,

I can't predict how my childrenshould be educated. I can't pre-dict how you should teach mychildren or what you should teachmy children. But one thing I doknow and that is that if my chil-dren are proud, if my childrenhave identity, if my childrenknow who they are and if they areproud to .41,,PlCV they are, theywill be able to encounter any-thing in life. Some people say aman without education might aswell be dead. I say a man with-out identity, if a man doesn'tknow who he is he might as wellbe dead.

Finally, bilingual, bicultural educa-tion makes it possible for personsfrom the dominant group to modifyvalue structures. That is to say,when an individual processes througheducational experiences which place

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cultures, values, beliefs and customsdifferent from his own in proper per-spective, a strong possibility existsfor value modification. You see, wehave spent many hours, months andyears studying and learning about"These" or "Those" people -- theminorities. As important as this is,it is not the crux of the problem.Each of us must undergo a process ofself-examination for self-understan-ding. Each individual holds values;rarely, if ever, do we examine whatthose values are. More importantly,if we know what values we hold, wenever attempt to determine "why" webelieve or value what we do.

Value clarification and modificationhas to occur among us if America isto avoid total chaos.

Let me cite some examples of expressedvalues which lead to conflict andlack of understanding.

In the early 1900s a famous educatorwas writing about America and minor-ities. Dr. Cubberly wrote:

Everywhere these people settle ingroups or settlements to set uptheir national manners, customsand observances. Our task is tobreak up these groups or settle-ments, to assimilate and amalga-mate these people as a part ofour American race and to implantin their children, so far as canbe done, the Anglo-Saxon concep-tion of righteousness, law andorder, and our popular govern-ment, and to awaken in them areverence for our democratic in-stitutions and for those thingsin our national life which we asa people hold to be of abidingworth.

One might say, "Yes, but that was inthe early 1900s, that doesn't happentoday." Let me cite a few more up-to-date versions of the same mentality.

1 In the spring of 1971, the Sun News, anewspaper in New Mexico, carried a let-ter to the Editor. The letter was inresponse to a student walk-out in aNew Mexican community. The writersays,

I was trying to get my educationso that I may go out and betterguide our great nation tomorrowwhen I'm one of the leaders also.... I must admit that afterhaving lived in Las Cruces for18 years, I was under the impres-sion that this was New Mexico,United States of America, and notMexico. I also thought that ournational language was English andnot Spanish ....

In 1971, several of us received a copyof a letter from an administrator at auniversity. This letter came from avery sensitive Anglo who had appliedfor a position in the foreign languagedepartment. He wanted us to know whatthe administrator had to say. Theletter reads:

Dear

Glad to hear from you. I've beenthinking about you, too, lately,and wish that I could tell you tocome home. The old days of per-sonal power have, however, givenway to the search committee syn-drome so your excellent qualifi-cations will have to join the con-siderable numbers of others in thehopper. This sudden administra-tive enthusiasm for Chicanism israther a response to an historicalaccident rather to any of the de-monstrated needs on my part whichhave been forwarded over the years.I do feel that the administration'spolicy is to seek the best-quali-fied person for a particular job

and to give preference to a Chi-cano, other things being equal.It is my private opinion that, fora variety of obvious reasons, a

4.

Chicano is less likely to be as wellqualified as a Gringo wasp SOB, sothere may be a thin ray of hopefor you.

We'll probably have to wait untilspring for final approval ofopenings due to the usual bureau-cratic reasons, but. I'll let youknow if anything of interest toyou occurs before then.

Very sincerely yours,

In 1973 the Lubbock Avalanche Journalcarried an editorial entitled, "Bi-lingual Extremism Cited."

Representative H.R. Cross, R-Iowa,was set off by a statement thatmany children, chiefly Spanish-surnamed, are unable to speakEnglish when they enter the firstgrade. "Well," he asked, "wheredoes the responsibility for thatkind of situation rest? Clearlyit rests upon the home. If a

child has not learned to speaksome English before.he or sheenters the first grade ... thereis something wrong with the fam-ily." Representative Wayne Hoys,D-Ohio, commented, "What do wewant to do? Perpetuate thesepeople so as not to be able tospeak English forever and ever?"

The point I'm trying to make is thatso long as individuals harbor atti-tudes and values such as those re-vealed in these quotations, we willcontinue to experience conflict andhostility. Beyond that, I'm sayingthat offering bilingual educationonly to minorities is only half theanswer. Speaking more than one lan-guage anywhere in the world, inclu-ding the United States, has alwaysbeen considered to have positivevalues for a population.

The New Mexico Attorney General in1971 rendered the opinion that

teachers in New Mexico must speakEnglish and Spanish. In May 1971,the Albuquerque Journal carried anarticle saying that, "The New MexicoAssociation of ClassrooM Teachersurged the State Department of Educa-tion to proceed with extreme cautionin responding to the Attorney Gen-eral's opinion."

Mrs. Dale Mathis chaired the TeacherEducation and Professional StandardsCommittee and reported several con-siderations;

Only a small segment of our studentpopulation is truly Spanish speaking.

Two problems come to mind with thatstatement: One Is the notion that ifsome individual doesn't speak "stan-dard" Spanish -- whatever that means-- then that individual isn't trulySpanish speaking, and secondly, thenumbers game enters into the picture.The system uses numbers to justifyaction or inaction. The decisiontends to be made pro or con dependingon what's convenient or expedient forthe individuals in power. Watergateis a case in point.

Thus, to say we don't need bilingualeducation because only a small segmentof our student population is trulySpanish speaking is like saying wedon't have any blacks around here;therefore.we don't need to know, re-spect, and understand them or theirculture. Presumably, one of America'sideals is that of understanding, ac-cepting, and respecting cultural dif-ferences. As Helen D. Wise, Presi-dent of NEA, writes, "Fostering anappreciation of different cultures,cultural values, and languages is oneof the best ways to help eliminateprejudice."

. . . . Bilingual, bicultural educa-tion is not a substitute for a well-developed and implemented educationalprogram. It is not a program that

5

minimizes the importance of English.Those who charge us with unwilling-ness to learn English are in effectquestioning our rational powers.Mexican Americans are keenly awareof the importance of languages --both Spanish and English. We areaware that English is the languageof the land and that different bene-fits can accrue to those who havecommand of the language. However,the monolingual educational system,as we know it, has not served togive Mexican Americans command ofthat language. Furthermore, andagain, even those who have command ofthe English language experienceprejudice and discrimination; thusour insistence upon bicultural edu-cation for all.

onzwmumwassfOomm.

AMERICAN HERITAGE

There are perhaps some among uswho may feel inclined to letsome one else make the effort;perhaps because the prospect ofsuccess seems remote, perhapsbecause of lack of convictionof the worthiness of the task.But let me remind all of us ofa great concept which our Indianancestors gave us which bringshome our responsibility foraction. They wrote in theircodices that the life of eachperson is irrevocably tied tothe life of some other. There-fore, whatever situation aperson finds himself in is theresult of the actions of ano-ther person sometime somewhere.And no matter what action aperson takes, at sometime,somewhere that action willaffect the life of anotherperson. And it follows, con-versely, that whatever actiona person does not take willhave a similar effect. So you

see, there is no way that any ofus can cop out. Whatever actionswe take, whatever actions we donot take, are bound to count inthe long run.

Armando Rodriquez, president,East Los Angeles Community College

6

A language ofsoft vowelsOscar Zeta Acosta

All the faces are brown, tinged withbrown, lightly brown, the feelingof brown. Old men with coarse blackhair, wrinkled weather-beaten hands.Levis and Mexican ranchero hats oftough, slick matted straw. Some-times there is a red feather or agreen one from a bantam roostersticking out from the band. Theircigarettes smell of earth and burn-ing leaves rather than of machines.Brown, black cowboy boots, sometimessandals of heavy leather straps,huaraches with soles from old rub-ber tires and sometimes barefootedboys with short-sleeved shirts andcotton pants from El Catoctin.These men do not speak much. Theylook out the windows into the coldnight as we begin to cross the RioGrande. A thick man with a khakisoldier uniform jumps on boardthe crowded car. He casuallystruts down the aisle, occasion-ally looking into the shopping bagheld firmly by some woman. Thewomen talk and chat and whisper,they do not pay him any attention.

Women of brown face, black, longhair and eyes for the devil him-self. There are hundreds of sing-ers from Juarez, thousands of mysisters, my cousins, my aunts andthe seven Chicanos who graduatedwith me from Riverbank Grammarschool. And they all are speakingin that language of my youth; thatlanguage which I had stopped speak-ing at the age of seven when the

captain insisted we wouldn't learnEnglish unless we stopped speakingSpanish; a language of soft vowelsand resilient consonants, always withthe fast rolling r's to threaten orto cajole; a language for moonlitnights in brown deserts and for mak-ing declarations of war on top ofsnow-capped mountains; a languageperfect in every detail for peoplewho are serious about life and pre-occupied with death only as it re-fers to that last day of one's so-journ on this particular spot.

I hadn't heard the Spanish languagespoken in public with such gustosince I'd left El Paso as a boy. I

had personally stopped speakingSpanish in front of Americans orOkies after Mr. Wilkie, my grammarschool principal, had threatened toexpel me. We were playing keep-away,the guys from the West Side againstthe guys from Okie Town each grab-bing, kicking, biting and sluggingto regain possession of a worn-outfootball. The tall, brown-suitedAmerican man who'd just become theprincipal the year I carved Jane'sinitials on my left hand stood watchover us during our lunch break.

"Pasamela, cabron," I shouted toJohnny Gomez in my best Pocho Spanish."Que esperas, pendejo?" And when hethrew it, I ran across the goal line.

"Ain't no good," Floyd shouted withhis red hair flying in his freckled

7

"Why not? Every time we make oneyou say it's no good," I said.

Wayne Ellis said, "You guys arecheating. You can't use secretmessages."

"Isn't that right, Mr. Wilkie?"Floyd shouted to the principal.

"Yes, that's right, boys ... I sawthat," the tall man said.

"What do you mean?" I demanded."I'can carry the ball, too. Thisis keep-away. Everyone can go forit."

He came right up close to me andwhispered, "But you can't speakSpanish, Oscar. We don't allowit."

"What? ... you say I can't talk inSpanish here?" "That's right.This is an American school ... wewant you boys to learn English."

"Even when we play keep-away? Evenhere?"

"If you want to stay in this school.Yes, you boys will have to speakonly English while on the schoolgrounds."

Perhaps if I had not been madly inlove with Jane Addison I might havefought the tall man, but I didn'twant to get kicked out of school,so I didn't speak in the languageof my parents until that night inJuarez, some twenty-odd yearslater.

From the Autobiography of a BrownBuffalo (Popular Library, 1972).

FOCUSING ON THE PERSONAL

For the very young child what it isto be Puerto Rican very often hassomething to do with his own parents,his own family, with the transitionfrom one culture to another. It isthis environment of which he is part,and which at times pushes him intopremature adulthood, that may be thethe focus of his most personal con-cern. But we may be able to find .

acting and speaking and communica-tive situations where the child canwork through things that he has notquite been able to deal with orabout which he would like to learnmore and, in particular, where hecan talk more to his peers.

Vera John, at the Workshop Center

8

Classrooms andstreets: somecomparisonsJohn Macnamara

Some things children seem to learnnaturally; others they have to betaught. Unaided, they seem to learnto walk and to perceive the worldvisually; on the other hand nearlyall children have to be taught arith-metic. Language is a peculiar em-barrassment to the teacher becauseoutside school children seem tolearn a language without any diffi-culty whereas in school with theaid of teachers their progress ishalting and unsatisfactory. It is

common experience that when trans-lated to a town where their nativelanguage is not spoken children willbecome reasonably proficient in thenew language in six months. It isequally common experience that aftersix years of schooling in the secondlanguage, whatever the teaching me-thod, most children emerge with avery poor command of the language.The first set of experiences showsthat children are possessed of avery powerful device for learninglanguages; the second shows that theschool harnesses the device only ina most inadequate manner. My articleis an sttempt to arrive at an expla-nation of the school's relativefailure and to derive therefromguidelines for teaching. I am en-couraged to do so because of theoverwhelming evidence from commonexperience that the child has vastly

more language learning potential thanhe F.::laws in the classroom. Indeed,

language is the sole school subject ofwhich we have this information, andconsequently is the subject where theprospects of improving learning arethe 1wightest and most substantial.

THE CAPACITY TO LEARN A LANGUAGE

The function of the human languagelearning capacity is defined with re-ference to a genuine language, such asFrench or German. If we could specifyexactly the code which we call Frenchwe would have taken the first and mostimportant step in the direction ofspecifying the nature of the languagelearning capacity. The second stepwould be to specify the actual learn-ing process whereby a person grappleswith the code and masters it. Thetroubles with this approach, however,are massive: we are very far indeedfrom being able to specify a code likeFrench, and we are even further frombeing able to specify the ZanguageZearning process.

I have argued elsewhere (Macnamara,1972) that infants learn their mothertongue by first determining, indepen-dent of language, the meaning which aspeaker intends to convey to them and

9

then working out the relationshipbetween the meaning and the expres-sion they heard. In other words, theinfant uses meaning as a clue to lan-guage, rather than language as a clueto meaning. The argument rests uponthe nature of language and its rela-tion to thought, and also upon thefindings of empirical investigationsinto the language learning of in-fants. The theory is not meant tobelittle the child's ability tograpple with intricate features ofthe linguistic code. These must begrasped even if the clue is usually-- though by no means always -- tobe found in meaning. The theoryclaims that the main thrust in lan-guage learning comes from the child'sneed to understand and to expresshimself.

Contrast, now, the child in thestreet with the child in the class-room. In the street he will not beallowed to join in the other chil-dren's play, not be allowed to usetheir toys, not even be treated bythem as a human being, unless hecan make out what they say to himand make clear to them what he hasto say. The reward for success andthe punishment for failure is enor-mous. No civilized teacher cancompete. But more to the point,the teacher seldom has anything tosay to his pupils so important thatthey will eagerly guess his meaning.And pupils seldom have anything sourgent to say to the teacher thatthey will improvise with whatevercommunicative skills they possessto get their meaning across. Ifmy analysis of infant languagelearning is correct, as I believeit to be, it can surely explainthe difference between the streetand the classroom without placingany serious strain on the analogybetween first and second languagelearning.

I want to carry this analysis fur-

ther and apply it to the school, butbefore I do I want to clear up onetheoretical matter. Many people ima-gine that babies learn languages ina special manner which is differentfrom the way older persons learn them.They miss the obvious point that foran adult to know a language is in allessentials the same as for a baby toknow it. Since the product is thesame, the simplest hypothesis is thatthe learning process is the same.Suits of clothes which look identicalare probably cut from the same pattern.There is then just as much magic inan adult's learning a language as ina baby's doing so. And in the absenceof all evidence to the contrary, wecan safely hypothesize that it is thesame magic.

SOME GUIDELINES FOR THE TEACHER

Though of late some writers (e.g.,Asher 1972) have proposed that languageteaching in classrooms should be model-led on the communication between mo-thers and babies, no one, so far asI am aware,has gone ahead to make prac-tical deductions from what we know ofrecent studies of language learningamong babies. Yet such deductionsare neither impractical nor counter-intuitive to what we know of theschoolchild. Let us, then, assumethat the schoolchild's mind is sofashioned that he approaches languagelearning largely as an infant does,and see what follows.

Our first conclusion must be thatteacher and children wallow in almosttotal misunderstanding. The teacherbelieves that language is to be re-spected and caressed for its own sake,that one needs to do penance and pre-pare oneself to capture the finepoints of pronunciation and grammaras Sir Galahad prepared himself toseek the Holy Grail. Children aresimply stunned by this attitude.

10

They believe that language is for com-municating: they see it as a modesttool, but communication for them isthe essence of the business. I be-lieve the children are right and theteachers wrong. I also believe thatthe only way to make the linguisticmagic work is to become vitally en-gaged in communicating something.

From this central confusion on thepart of teachers follow several cor-ollaries. Babies begin with one-word sentences and manage to com-municate very well in them. School-children are usually required to speakin full sentences in an unnaturalmanner: "that is not a hen; that isa lawnmower." The teacher sees vir-tue in full sentences and the school-child is at a loss to know why.

Parents are proud of any effort whicha small child makes to express hi21-self in words. They welcome hisphonological innovations; they ac-cept his bits of words; and theyunderstand his telegraphese. As amatter of fact, parents seldom cor-rect a small child's pronunciationor grammar; they correct his badmanners and his mistakes on pointsof fact (see Gleason, 1967). Some-how, when a child is vitally con-cerned with communicating, he grad-ually sets over his difficultiesand eradicates errors, at least tothe point where society accepts hisspeech. His parents' attention ison his meaning, not on his language,and so probably is his own. Andcuriously he and his parents breakone of psychology's basic learningrules. Psychology would advise thathe should be rewarded only for lin-guistically correct utterances,whereas parents reward him foralmost any utterance. But that taefolk widsom of the Italians, olderthan experimental psychology, hascreated a proverb which gives thelie to psychology and agrees withparent and child -- sbagliando

s'impara (by making mistakes we learn).By contrast the conscientious teacherpounces on all departures from phono-logical and syntactlemperfection:she does not care what the studentsays as long as he says it correctly.The schoolchild, unused to such treat-ment in learning his first language,is unnerved and finds himself at adisadvantage. He does not, of course,analyze the situation; he merely be-comes bored or concludes that he lacksthe talent for languages.

Finally, a mother does not have anotherverbal language in which to talk to thebaby if he fails to understand her.She has to make do with gestures,facial expressions and exaggeratedtones of voice. Because they are bothinvolved in communicating they usuallymanage somehow. How different it isin the classroom! Teacher and childusually have another common language,and could communicate better if theyreally needed to. Indeed they oftendo have recourse to the other lan-guage. Teachers, unlike mothers, donot exploit to the full the basicnatural language of gestures, into-nation, facial expressions, andevents in the environment to providethe child with clues to the meaning.As a result, classroom conversationsseem remote, unreal, and often life-less compared with the conversationsof a mother and child. Basically itis the same disease that we have en-countered before: The teacher seeslanguage mainly as something to belearned; the child sees it mainly asa means of communication. He is sel-dom interested in language, butrather in the information it conveys.

SOME COUNTERARGUMENTS

Partly in opposition to the positionI am taking is a common belief thatone's language device atrophies ratherearly in life. The evidence for this

0

11

is that babies pick up their mothertongue with what seems like great ease,and young children in suitable envir-onments pick up a second languagewith little trouble, whereas adultsseem to struggle ineffectively witha new language and to impose thephonology and syntax of their mothertongue on the new language. The ar-gument has been supported with someevidence from neurophysiology (Pen-field and Roberts, 1959), but thevalue of this evidence is dubious,to say the least.

I suspect that the evidence whichmost supporters of the theory drawupon confounds two phenomena, thechild in the street and the chilein the school. Small children don'tgo to school; older ones usuallylearn languages in school. ratherthan in the street. We have alreadyseen that these two phenomena mustbe distinguished, but besides allthis, many families have the experi-ence of moving to a new linguisticenvironment in which the childrenrapidly learn the language and theadults do not. This happened fre-quently to English families whichmoved to one of the colonies, suchas India. In such cases, the lin-guistic experience might well beattributed to unfavourable atti-tudes towards the new language whichthe parents but not the childrenadopted. However, Italian familieswhich migrated to the United Statesoften met with a similar linguisticfate -- the children learned Englishand the parents, despite favorableattitudes, did not. Is this con-clusive evidence that languagelearning ability atrophies?

Not Let us take clear examples; letus compare a man of forty with aninfant.. We could not prove thatthe man was less skilled in languagelearning unless we gave the man anopportunity equal to that of thechild to learn a language. We would

1110. 1151021

reed to remove the man from the pre-occupations of his work and supplyhim with a woman who devoted a largepart of her time and anergy to helpinghim learn the language. Further, thewoman would have to behave just likethe mother of a small baby, whichamong other things would include treat-ing anything the man said in his mothertongue as she would treat a child'sbabbling. Naturally such an experi-ment has never been carried out, andfor that reason there are almost nogrounds for the general fatalismabout adults' ability to learn lan-guages. On the contrary, what ex-perimental evidence we have suggeststhat adults are aemally better thanchildren. Smith and Braine (in press)found adults superior at decipheringand remembering instructions givenin what to them was a foreign lan-guage. Thus there are grounds foroptimism in this area.

However, there is evidence that adultsand even teenagers generally havedifficulty in mastering the pronunci-ation and intonational patterns of anew language, or even a new dialect.Labov (1966) found that persons whomoved to Manhattan after the age oftwelve seldom came to sound exactlylike persons who grew up there.Similarly, persons who learn a lan-guage after adolescence usually sounda little bit foreign. But this doesnot mean that they do not communicatein that language very effectively andeven quite normally. It is unwise tooveremphasize their phonological dif-ficulties. Apart from this there isno evidence that after adolescenceone cannot learn a language as rapidlyand as well as a small child.

A second strategy employed to explainwhy infants and children in streetsare better language learners thanchildren in classrooms is to arguethat the latter learn formally where-as the infant and the child in thestreet learns informally.

12

But since it is impossible to specifythe elements and rules of a language,it follows that the term formallearning can be applied to languageonly in the loosest sense. If wecannot reduce language to formula,we cannot learn it by formula. Theextent to which we cannot formulatea language is the extent to whichour learning of it cannot be formaland this is to a very great extent.On the other hand there are usefulrules or formulas which capturesome of the regularities of a lan-guage. It is the case that theseare often explicitly taught toadults, and they are never taughtto infants. May we not speak ofthe adults' learning as being tothis extent formal, and that of theinfant as informal? And if so, isthis an important difference? Theanswer is most unlikely to be anaffirmative. The main reason isthat the normal grammatical rulesgiven to students are merely hintswhich so depend upon linguisticintuition, that they constitutevery little evidence indeed for any-thing which can justly be termedformal learning; neither do theysuggest a large difference in-learning style and strategy be-tween babies and adults.

Among the most commonly canvassedexplanations for the relative lackof success in language work inclassrooms is an unfavourable atti-tude among the students to the lan-guage or its speakers. I am surethat this is not without foundation,but I also feel that it is greatlyexaggerated. The argument ought atleast to deal with the fact thathistorically language shifts havegenerally been accompanied by unfa-vourable attitudes to a conqueringpeople and its language. There hasalways been antipathy between theIrish and the English; yet Englishreplaced Irish. The Highland Scotsbehaved just like the Irish, and

while the Welsh proved tougher thaneither, they too seem to be in theprocess of changing to English. Theyare, of course, following in ancientfootsteps, because centuries ago theCeltic languages of Europe succumbedto Latin. Despite determined effortsto prevent it, the people of Provencehave accepted French in place ofProvencal, and the Catalonians havelearned Castilian in addition toCatalan. But there is no need tomultiply examples!

A child suddenly transported fromToronto to Berlin will rapidly learnGerman no matter what he thinks ofthe C'rmans. Indeed when he makeshis first; appearance on the streetand meets German children he isLikely to be appalled by the experi-ence. They will not understand aword he says; they will not makesense when they speak; and they arelikely to punish him severely bykeeping him incommunicado. I haveargued elsewhere (Macnamara, 1972)that he will learn German becausehe must understand what is being saidto him precisely when it is said, andhe must communicate precisely whenthe need arises. His need to com-municate has very little to do withwhat is commonly understood as anattitude to a people or its language.

CONCLUSION

To return to the main line of argu-ment, which is to take the infant orthe child in the street as the model,it is clear that the teacher's jobis to set up the language class sothat communication in the new lan-guage is essential to the students.This can probably be best done byturning it into an activity period.If the students are cooking, or en-gaged in handicraft, needs to com-municate rapidly arise. The teacher,then could explain in the foreign

13

language what needed to be done andallow the student to demand furtherinformation and clarification. Whata change that would be! The teachershould be so serious about this thatshe would allow what is being cookedor made to be spoiled if the studentfails to understand. She shouldnever fuss about language, but ratherbe delighted with all attempts totalk.. Perhaps, there would be alot to be said for mixing studentsof various levels of proficiency inthe same activity in order to in-crease the linguistic resources.This would be more like the family,and it has the support of the excel-lent experience of such cooperationin small country schools. If theteacher tells a story, she shouldnot break off every line to noteunusual usages or to ask whetherthe students know some word. Thestory should be the thing, and thestudents should be obliged to askfor explanations when they needthem. But this is not the place togive a detailed scheme. I willhave to leave that to another time,or better still, to other people.

One final point. Babies do notdiffer much in ability to learn alanguage. Leave aside the deaf ones,those who are severely retarded men-tally, and a few who have patholo-gical linguistic troubles, and therest seem to learn with littledifficulty. One may be a littlemore talkative than another; onemay progress a little more quicklythan another and learn a larger vo-cabulary. But we must look closelyif we are to notice linguistic dif-ferences and disentangle them fromother variables such as general in-telligence and vitality. In foreignlanguage classrooms the linguisticvariation is enormous, and this Itake as a sign of failure to engagethe children's faculte de Language.I am not surprised to find enormousdifferences among people in solving

mathematical problems, but I would beif I were to find them among people inwalking. Walking, I take it, is"natural" whereas solving mathematicalproblems is somehow "artificial." Itwould seem that homes and streets pro-duce "natural" language, whereasschools produce "artificial" language,and that the variation among studentsis an indication of the artificiality.Our task is to make the school morelike the home and the street. Mybelief is that when we really learnthis lesson, individual differencesin linguistic attainment will ceaseto be striking. I also forecast alean time for those whose business,as guidance counsellors, is predic-ting such differences.

The article is reprinted from ModernLanguage Journal. John Macna'nara

teaches at McGill University.

The paradox is that kids pick upnew languages in the street veryeasily, but they have great dif-ficulty in picking them up insidethe classroom. How can westrengthen peer interaction inan informal classroom so thatchildren get a chance to listenmore to the spontaneous languageof kids from their own languagebackground and can practice thatlanguage as well as listen moreto the second language and prac-tice that second language? Howcan we strengthen peer learningin informal education?

Vera John, at the Workshop Center

14

In the Chinatown ghettoStanley ChuThe bias in American schools againstbilingual education has cut both ways.Not only has it deprived large num-bers of children of the use of theirmother tongue by refusing to bendthe existing system of instructionin the English language only, but insome instances, as the following ar-ticle attests, it has deprived chil-dren of a meanineut opportunity foreducation even within that system byfailing to give "non- native English

speakers adequate English instruction;by failing, in other words, to recog-nize and deal with how one's nativelanguage encompasses one's reality.

The man was shocked that I could speakEnglish so well. At the end of ourseminar, he said the only other Asianshe ever met spoke poor English or noneat all. The experience reflects howspare the efforts have been in Englishlanguage instruction for non-Englishspeaking Asian children in this country.

Large numbers of non-English-speakingschool children receive no specialEnglish language teaching. WhereEnglish is the language of instructionin almost every subject, such childrenare forced to operate with a handicapso large as to make public educationpractically meaningless for them.

San Francisco has the largest Asianpopulation of any city outside theAsian world. Economic, social, and upuntil recent years, legal pressuresfrom the white community have forcedChinese families to live in the China-town ghetto.

Preschool age children often mustaccompany their mothers to work infactories and shops within the China-

ewjmip

town community. Although groups suchas New York City's Asian Children'sUnderground exist on a limited basis,day care and other preschool groupsin this area are very few.

Such pressures make it difficult forChinese children to hear and speakEnglish on the streets. So, thesurrounding English language of thelocal neighborhood is less rich andvaried and an important source ofEnglish language instruction is oftennonexistent.

Last January, the. Supreme Court handeddown an important decision concerningthe role San Francisco public schoolshave in the teaching of English tonon-English-speaking Chinese children.The Court ruled that San Franciscopublic schools were failing to provideEnglish language instruction to chil-dren of Chinese ancestry who did notspeak English. Whether or not thiswas intentional, this resulted indenying them a meaningful opportunityfor education within the existingcity school system. Providing these

children with the same facilities,books, teachers, and curriculum didnot result in equal treatment, theCourt held.

The. Court used as the legal justifi-cation for its decision the fact thatthe San Francisco public schools hadbeen receiving large amounts of federalfinancial assistance. The guidelinesfor receiving such money require schooldistricts "to rectify the languagedeficiency in order to open" instruc-tion to students who have linguisticdeficiencies. In the case of theSan Francisco public school system,approximately 1,000 Chinese childrenwho spoke little or no English were

15

AMIMMIMMI

already receiving supplemental Englishlanguage courses. But, even at thetime of the Supreme Court ruling,1,800 non-English-speaking Chinesechildren were being denied specialEnglish instruction.

This Supreme Court decision is a strong,affirmative move. Speaking, reading,and writing English well gives childrena chance to receive a meaningful edu-cation within the existing schoolstructure. But in the traditionalform of accomplishing this goal, thereexists the danger of an unintentionalbut effective denial of the importantcultural wellsprings of energy. Forthe Asians, as with others, thisdenial often produces an overzealousconcern for being adopted and assim-ilated by the white American culture.On my own childhood block in LosAngeles, some of my Asian friends aswell as myself regarded Chinese andJapanese after-school language lessonslike the stereotype attitude towardsviolin or piano lessons. Our atti-tude was one of "Why bother". Eng-lish was spoken or at least very muchencouraged in our homes, and oftenthe drive by parents to economicallysucceed included hard work along withmaking themselves as unobtrusive, andtherefore as "white," as possible onthe job. My friends and I felt this,and responded in a similar way.

Even as children, we were tuned intothe way others, and we ourselves,responded to o4r own Asian physicalfeatures. There still exists todaysome degree of animosity betweenAsians who are English dominant andthose who are dominant in anotherlanguage. "Fresh off the boat" is aslur used even by Asians against otherAsians. Obviously, this is self-destructive, or at least destructiveof the self. A strong and importantargument can be made for Englishdominant Asians to learn their ownancestral Asian language. For the

Asiall-born or Asian-derived, the

positive strengthening of one'sidentity as Asian-American shouldnot and in truth cannot be denied.The learning of English should notpreclude this strengthening, butrather increase self awareness andpeace within oneself.

16

New york cityperspectiveLuis Mercado

In 1970, when I became principal ofP.S. 75, our school was no differentfrom other schools in other parts ofthe city, if we're talking now aboutthe fact that children drop out allalong the way, that children arefailing en masse. Before the bi-lingual program, the Puerto Ricanchildren in this school were notbeing tested, they were being placedin non-English-speaking classes,they were considered brain-injuredor retarded. Their language was notspoken in the school. They werebeing isolated in the classrooms.They were disappearing into thewalls, just withdrawing, living intheir own cultural enclaves withinthe classroom.

Three years ago, some City Collegestudents made some observations ofour classrooms, and were quite awareof this kind of withdrawal, passi-vity, timidity, as well as the be-havior problems that were a resultof children who had given up, andwere not learning. In this schoolroughly nine out of every ten chil-dren of Puerto Rican and Hispanicbackground were approximately three

This is taken from the transcript ofan interview held earlier this yearwith Luis Mercado, principal of P.S.75 in Manhattan.

years behind in all their academicareas<

In the three years that have passed,if I've done anything, I've deepenedmy convictions about bilingualism.Not only do I see children needingtheir native language along with thelanguage of the dominant culture inwhich they also live, I see thatchildren need their native languagefor a greater period of time. In-struction should continue in theirnative language. Their native lan-guage can support English. And Eng-lish can support their native lan-guage. I really see this as nec-essary for their whole school life,not just for one or two or threeyears, which is all that the lawrequires now. Hopefully, New YorkState or the government of New YorkCity will recognize that fact andmake available that option for PuertoRican and Hispanic children.

We started the bilingual program atP.S. 75 with two classes. We hadour difficulties, particularly re-sentment and resistance on the partof many teachers and parents. Wewere bucking the pressure and desirefor assimilation on the part of themiddle income Puerto Rican and His-panic parents who had made it. Theyfelt that if they had made it, or iftheir oldest son or daughter had made

17

It this way -- by assimilation --why should these children have to makeit any other way. Naturally they hadsuccess stories to point to in supportof their not wanting bilingualism.Any school can have one, two, three,four, or five success stories', andthen the success stories-become thestandard by which you measure every-thing. So we had some resistancesthere. America has never been veryhospitable to bilingual education.The lesson it taught those who workedto succeed in it was not to questionits values. And the values tradi-tionally reinforce monolingualism.

How did we deal with those resis-tances? We met, we talked, we keptpeople fully informed. We workedentirely through volunteerism. Werecommended children to go into theprogram; nobody was forced. We stroveto get the cooperation of everyone.We talked the same way to people asI'm doing now; we told them the waythings were. And no one could refutethe particular facts. There weresome children whose parents did notwant them in the program and indeedthey did not put them in the program,and all of these children have suf-fered from massive educationalfailure. We would not force childreninto the program because you need theparents' cooperation. Ultimately wecould persuade, but the parents arethe ones that have to decide. Andthere still are a few people inthis district and in this school whowould prefer to have their childrenfail than to have them learn in abilingual way.

Bilingual education can be either forthe English dominant child learningSpanish or the Spanish dominant childwho needs to learn how to converse inEnglish. We developed our thrust forthe Spanish dominant children whowere being disabled or massively re-tarded by the kind of education de-veloped in this school before I came in.

At least ninety percent of the chil-dren were not making it. And becausethe Puerto Rican parents were so con-ditioned in terms of authority to re-spect the teacher, to respect theschool, to respect the principal, andwould very rarely blame the teacher orthe principal, they would blame them-selves for the massive failure. Andthen they would be tremendously over-wrought; they would feel terrificguilt, self-hatred even, which theywould take out on their children. Inthe end, they would always blame theirchildren for their "retardation," fornot being able to read. They wouldblame it on lack of discipline. Theywould blame it on bad company. Theywould blame it on themselves, theirfamily. And there would be tremendousfeelings of inadequacy, which, again,drove parents-further away from theschool in terms of involvement.. Thevery factor of educational failurekept many, many parents from partici-pating in the life of the school andcooperating. They felt frustrated aswell as ashamed. They felt reallyliterally ashamed of their children'sinability to function within ourschool environment. We've had ourproblems. We still have difficultywith parent involvement. It's a hardprocess when you're dealing with poorpeople who have to work virtually allday long and come home exhausted or,if they are activists, have too manyinvolvements in the evening; you haveto work out these things. Also, ourinitial group of teachers were verypoorly trained to work with Spanish-speaking children and we had to engagethem in massive training.

At the start, the bilingual program wastoo weak to operate as an independentunit. We had a lot of turnover thatfirst year, for one thing. We neededto work with people who would supportour concepts about bilingual educationand we needed a place in which to trainour people to work that way. In ourparticular setting the place that seemed

18

to have the most positive feelingstowards bilingual education -- or atleast did not resist the concepts ofbilingual education -- was the OpenCorridor Program. The parents asso-ciation -- those parents who weresupporting the Open Corridor -- feltthat there was nothing inconsistentabout that. So I made it one of theconditions of my support for the.OpenCorridor Program that I would alsosupport the Bilingual Education Pro-gram, that you couldn't have onewithout the other. I thought bothprograms were good for children.And in terms of our particular en-vironment, the bilingual educationprogram would have been destroyed ifit were part of a traditional classnetwork in our school. You can'tdevelop a bilingual program withself-contained classroom teacherswho do not see themselves as part ofa team or as part of a community ofpeople, and who do not share thegoals of these people, and who donot speak Spanish, and who knownothing about Puerto Rican or His-panic culture. Obviously the tra-ditional classroom wouldn't be theenvironment in which a program couldgrow.

Am I saying that bilingual programscan only work in an open classroom?No. Bilingual programs can "work"in settings other than Open Corri-dors, if by "work" you mean raisingthe level of "school success." Forexample, it can "work" in a tradi-tional school, where only one childout of 10 is making it, by offering,over the years, a situation whereby20 percent, or 30 percent, or even40 percent of the kids will be makingit in terms of test scores. Withtests as the criteria, such a pro-gram will be very attractive.

However, we're talking now aboutschooling as part of an integratedsetting, where the Puerto Rican chil-dren are not a majority in the school.

In P.S. 75, they're only about 20 per-cent of the population. As I said be-fore we needed support for a bilingualprogram. In our settings there wasno support,from the more formal class-rooms, from the traditional people,for bilingual children. Moreover, the

-Open Corridor Program Advisors werethe only people in our district whounderstood developmental psychologyand the role of concrete experiencesin child development and had a feelingfor what children are like and howchildren develop and grow. So thatit wasn't as if we had choices. To us,at the time, there seemed to be onechoice. The alternative was failure.All that has changed, there are vari-eties of teaching styles in thoseclasses, there's variety in teachingstyles in the open classes. We havebetter trained people. There arenew staff members. The environmentis quite different from what it wasin 1970. Three years have brought alot of changes. We have a much morehumane environment. We've also de-veloped support outside of the school.Something that doesn't support whatwe're doing is the fact that ourneighborhood is very transient. I

estimate that in the last one and ahalf years some 70 percent of ourparents and kids have been new to ourschool. Two years before, that wasn'tso. People are moving back to thecity, apartments are being cut up,hotels in the area are taking in a lotof families living on public assis-tance, there are new housing projectson Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.

We are very much affected by publicpolicy in a lot of areas other thaneducation. Decontrolling or increas-ing rents can affect our pupil pop-ulation quite frankly. All thesethings that contribute to or detractfrom transientness affect our program.We have to know more children veryquickly over a shorter period of time.In simplistic terms, we don't have aneighborhood community. That's one of

19

the problems.

This is a West Side community, and weare more hooked into the West Sidethan our immediate neighborhood. Thearea's congresswoman Bella Abzug usedour school to present the finalistsof her essay writing contest on theurban city. We have people coming infrom all over the place. Of coursethere is an advantage to being thatkind of school. Being so attractiveto so many people, it assures us ofhaving no loss of teachers. But thedisadvantage is that it precludesthe typical community involvementthat is so important, for one thing,to bilingual education.

Many of the large 15-story, 20-storyapartment houses right on our blockhave few or any children of elemen-tary school age. The people wholive there are working people, singlepeople, older people whose kids havegrown up and moved away. They, inturn, don't want to leave thesefantastic apartments because theyare rent-controlled. For the pur-poses of integration we have to reachall the way up to 101st Street rightopposite another public school todraw kids. So where the local com-munity is, is hard to define. Inthe past we had a certain stabilityin the school population from middle-income housing complexes on Amster-dam Avenue, but now that has beenundone by rent increases and citypressure on Mitchell -Lama housing.Once again, we're becoming relativelyunstable and that creates a wholenew thing because we have to thentrain parents and children aroundour goals and objectives: open edu-cation, bilingual education, humaneeducation.

Despite the transientness of ourneighborhood we see some thingshappening hete, however. Becauseof the transientness, we could copout and say, "Well, we can't have

things happening here because we don'tknow who the kids are. They're hertoo few years. And you've got to giveus more time." A lot of schools usethat excuse. But we are showing re-sults with the population we have eventhough we're becoming as unstable asmany of the schools in New York City.We're trying to deal with the childrenas they come -- at various levels ofskills, not reading, whatever. For us,it is more important to have stabilityin the school if there is none in thegeneral environment. And you createthat stability by opening up thestructure and not making it rigid. Youdo it by creating a structure that hasflexibility and some give to it. Ina way we've just come into this under-standing. When I first came here,it was generally assumed that thiswas a fixed neighborhood. Now wesee that this wasn't so. We wereworking towards a more open, a moreflexible school for different goals andobjectives. Now it seems to be verynecessary to be open and flexible justfor some of the basic educationalthings we are doing in our school.

How did I use my authority to supportthe bilingual program? Well, firstof all, and obviously, through thehiring of personnel. We have peoplefrom every conceivable background onour staff. We have Mexican Americans,we have an African staff member whois fluent in five languages, we haveclassroom paraprofessionals who comefrom Cuba, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, wehave a school aide from the DominicanRepublic. The importance of this isthat the children are able to identifywith these adults in terms of theirown heritage and their own cultures.It's an environment that encourages anopenness about one's heritage, as wellas respect for the others, for dif-ferences -- but not simply as a matterof dry principle but as a living prac-tice. Our Spanish-speaking childrenare also encouraged to share with themajority groups in the school -- the

20

monolingual kids, and vice versa.There is song-sharing, visits, Span-ish-speaking children in the bilingualprogram learning English by goinginto other classes, children inmonolingual classes going into bi-ling4a1 classes and learning Spanishas c foreign language. There's a lotof incidental as well as formal in-struction involved in our bilingualeffort. We also have bilingual par-ents -- a group within our parentassociation -- who function withinthis context. And they all becomeintegrated within our open-endedstructure.

Another way I can use my authority insupport of the program is by usingservices and Title I money in waysthat will have the greatest impacton the children in the program. If

people. are drawing money from us inour school, such as paraprofessionals,teachers, teacher aides, the Advisoryprogram, then some of the servicesthat they perform have to be directservices for children. So I mightsay to a teacher or to an Advisoror to one of the people from theTeachers and Writers Collaborative,"Hey, in terms of our planning,let's work a little bit with thisclass, with these kids, in thissituation; let's take a look atthese six kids in a particularclassroom setting, so that we canassess the impact of the monies."A specific example of this is thework of the Teachers and WritersCollaborative. We brought them intothe school with Title I money, andasked them to work with the bilin-gual class. They've just come outwith a beautiful book of children'swriting -- in English. The childrenwrote it in Spanish and then trans-lated it into English themselves --which indicates that as they gotmore fluent in Spanish they were moreable to master and dominate English,to function in that area. We likethe book a lot. We had an author's

party; the class was there, and theparents used our complex video equip-ment to tape the event, So the bilin-gual parents have become video tapetechnicians, and their kids have becomecreative writers -- in a bilingualsetting. And we have a book of poetryto be used by all our classes.

This is part of the process we've beengoing through during the last threeyears. Nor could any of it have hap-pened if we hadn't gone through theprocess. This includes the establish-ment of relationships, people beingsupportive of each other, learning howto use libraries, learning how to usemuseums, developing materials, makingcontacts with publishers of Spanish-language materials, working within thefabric of the school, sharing resources,working together.

A Puerto Rican teacher who has a license-- and there are very few in the system-- got into that job because he wassuccessful in English. He got intothat job because he was assimilated.I was a successful teacher in a class-room setting. But there was no supportor encouragement -- nor would I evendream of it -- for teaching the kidsin Spanish. I might teach them alittle conversational Spanish, andtalk to parents in Spanish -- butnothing else. For a Puerto Ricanteacher or a Hispanic teacher whoarrived by passing tests in Englishand going through a system of educa-tion where they succeeded in English --it would be virtually impossible towork in a bilingual classroom. Theydidn't get their B.A. or their M.A.,or for that matter any reward, forspeaking Spanish. The schools havehad bilingual teachers in school-community relations jobs, but theirjob descriptions specified workingprimarily with parents and staff mem-bers, not with children. So therewould be no true reward for thatteacher working in Spanish with children.Moreover, public policy discouraged it,

21

even though it was legally possibleto do. Actually the law is ambiguouson the matter. It never said youmust teach only in English. But thenit never said you must teach in Span-ish or another language. What thelaw does say is that if a child hasnot received any bilingual instruc-tion and is 10 years old, you cangive him three years of it. That'sthe law in New York State. Nor doesit say how many children you haveto have, whether it's 50 percent or75 percent of the school or districtor whatever. So the State law hasbeen very minimal. It did not createthe possibilities for a continuousbilingual program stretching fromkindergarten all the way throughjunior high school. But that'sobviously the next step. There isa move now to amend the State lawto make it possible to have six yearsof bilingual instruction becausechildren are coming into the schoolsystem on every entry level.

For the first time last year, underChancellor Scribner, tax leviedmonies were allocated for bilingualeducation. This year the amount is$14 million. And since the moneycomes through the Central Board, andis shared out on a per capita basis,the districts have to have true bi-lingual programs. They can't havean English as a Second Languageprogram and no Spanish instruction.They can no longer set up a classthey call "bilingual" only to useit as a dumping class, or a juniorguidance situation, or a CRMD situ-ation, or you name it. They haveto come up with an authentic bilin-gual program. In addition, federalfunding of bilingual education hasmoved up. There are now 22 bilingualeducation programs in existence inthe city and my guess is that it willmove up to about 30 next year.

Observingat P.S.Ver *a, John

When I first arrived at the school,I met with the principal and someof his staff. They were engncYed inan informal conference, affected bythe principal's attempts to keep avery young kitten from escaping fromhis arms. He took us to one of thebilingual classes and as childrencame to ask him about the kitten,he told them that she belonged tothe school and he was trying tofind out which of the classes wantedto adopt her. When asked by one ofthe children, "What is the name ofthe kitten?" he hesitated for amoment and then said, "Emily Dickin-son." Though it was a dark andrainy day, I felt good about theatmosphere inside thr, school.

TWO-WAY BILINGUAL EXPERIENCES

In this school, a number of concernsprevalent among bilingual educatorsare being dealt with effectively.As the school has children from avariety of ethnic and linguistic

;'era Job:, who has been a visitingcons:titant tc tke Workshop Centerfor the last two years, is profes-SOP of Psychology and EducationalFoundations at the University of

A!exico. She wrote this neno:zfter a visit to P.S. 75 earlyLast spring.

22

backgrounds, they are moving towardutilizing this diversity in a pro-ductive way. 'Children who areSpanish-English bilinguals aretutoring monolingual children.Signs announcing school events arewritten clearly in two languages,which is important to both the bi-lingual and monolingual groups asvisible reminders of the vitalityof the two languages. The methodsused in some classrooms to strengthenthe weaker language of some pupilsis experience-oriented. This isparticularly striking in the class-room of two young teachers who havechosen to learn from the children'sown interests when teaching them.This, too, is the classroom in whjchtwo-way bilingualism is particularlysuccessful. (The bilingual coordina-tor seems to work well with all theteachers who share most fully withher a particular approach to learning,and her willingness to work just ashard with other teachers whose stylesdiffer from her own preference.

STYLES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

There is indeed a broad range ofvariations in the way in which eachteacher implements an open or astructured concept of classroom or-ganization. In one class, although

much time is spent in teacher-directedactivities, a number of studentsfound ways of engaging in indepen-dent projects. Thiswas a class ofolder children in which very ex-citing work was carried out inmap-making and the study of anatomy.The work of these students couldbecome th' basis of supplying muchneeded materials in Spanish forthe upper grades.

In other classes, teachers wereexhibiting a high degree of imagi-nation in implementing informal andexperience-based learning. Though

they did not speak of tieir choiceof using visual and spatial repre-sentations as an important focusfor cognitive growth, I was struckby the way in which map-making andcollages charted the growth in con-ceptualization of second gradechildren who started in the fallwith a simple representation oftheir immediate neighborhood andare now working on a major construc-tion of all five boroughs in NewYork City. In this latter effort,they are dealing with problems ofphysics, social studies and geog-raphy. To me, the most interest-ing aspect of this effort was thatthe teacher kept the earlier groupefforts in her crowded closet sothat she, the children, and parents,as well as "outside evaluators"could clearly see the nature ofthe children's intellectual growthduring the year.

There are some bilingual classroomsin which the combined style ofteachers and children emerge as amore verbal one. It seems to me(and this is a point which I empha-sized during my meeting with theteachers) that it should be pos-sible to complement one class-room's strength with that of another.Short dramatic presentations by oneclassroom can be linked with theconstruction activities of another.

In such a way, each teacher wouldfeel more comfortable with her/hisparticular area of strength andfeel less threatened by the visibleachievements of a colleague. It isparticularly difficult in innovativeprograms to feel satisfied with one'sown and individual efforts. Theseteachers seemed relieved when Ispoke of the impressive work I haveobserved and of the possibility thatthey could view each other in a com-plementary rather than a competitivemanner.

23

ORAL AND WRITTEN APPROACHES

I heard an easy switching fromEnglish to Spanish and vice versain many of the classrooms. Teachershave a good understanding of howto make the two languages co-exist;how to remind children at times tofunction in one or the other lan-guage; and how, as mentioned above,to use the children's own compe-tencies as a resource for as effec-tive bilingual classroom.

The same equality of representationof the two languages is not found interms of written materials. Theteachers are familiar with the majorresources available for bilingualclassrooms, such as the MaterialsAcquisition Project in San Diego,and their evaluation of some ofthese materials have been published.But there is a serious shortage ofwritten materials in three areas:(a) a sufficient quantity and di-versity of reading materials whichhave a strong appeal to the children;(b) reading materials which dealwith the actual experiences of theurban, Puerto Rican child; and (c)a general shortage of materials forthird, fourth and fifth grade bilin-gual children.

(a) A highly popular reading series

consist5', of small, paperbound booksof stories. These are fast to readand seem to appeal to the childrenin the lower grades, who are inde-pendent readers. But the childrenare already quite familiar with thecontent of these books. I realizedthat though educators understandthe importance of establishing amatch between children's experi-ences and their reading matter(see "b"),sthe physical format ofwritten materials is equally im-portant, particularly in class-rooms where there is a broad rangeof reading levels and language

dominance present. In making re-commendations to publishers andin working with teachers who areputting out their own reading ma-terials, these issues of formatand readability should be empha-sized as they are especially sig-nificant in informal classrooms.

(b) There was unanimous agreementthat the books which were availableto the children failed to reflectthe realities of life in the bigcity; nor did they depict the ex-periences of frequent travel be-tween the mainland and the island,so common to many Puerto Ricanchildren. The teachers are doinga fine job in using newspaper ar-ticles, maps, m6.gazine pictures,historical series, and homemadecookbooks to fill this gap throughtheir own efforts. Indeed, I havenever seen a bilingual school inwhich teachers exhibited such ahigh degree of inventiveness andcommitment in creating culturallyrelevant materials with the stu-dents. (This includes childrenfrom other Caribbean islands, andSouth America, as well as fromPuerto Rico.) One minor criti-cism is that the interests of boysmay not be as fully represented inthe collages as that of girls.

However, even this extensive ef-fort on the part of the teaching

staff cannot fully compensate forthe lack of commercially producedmaterials. It was my suggestionthat the District 5 teachers app7.yfor Workshop funds akin to thoseheld by Mobilization for Youth in .

the early days of the War on Poverty,whereby teachers and writers, work-ing together, produce new and rele-vant materials. Dolores Gonzalezof the University of New Mexico hasprepared a manual for the construc-tion of readers, based upon her ex-perience in writing such a seriesfor first and second graders in

24

New Mexico. This is available fromthe University of New Mexico Pressand should be of great help to theteachers at P.S. 75. In contrastwith classrooms in the Southwest, Ifelt that music was well used in someof the classes; but, here, too, a lot

more could be done with music as acrucial focus for the developmentof bicultural and bilingual children.

In a conversation with Miriam Colon,the director of the Puerto RicanTraveling Theater, it became clearthat she and her group may be ableto help strengthen bilingual educa-tion at the elementary level, asthey have already done considerablework with and for high school andcollege students.

(c) The most acutely felt need interms of materials is at the third,fourth, and fifth grade levels. It

is in these classrooms that theteachers are confronted with thecombined pressures of the influxof many children who have been edu-cated in structured settings eitherabroad or in other schools and thelack of readily available, individ-ualized,and interesting curriculummaterials in Spanish. In learningphysiology, students used a three-dimensional model, anatomy textbooks,and their own curiosity to createbilingual materials in their ownnotebooks. P.S. 75 may need to relymore systematically upon these andsimilar efforts on the part of stu-dents as a basis for a bilingual re-source room. In addition, teachersmay need to became involved to agreater extent in screening and pur-chasing materials from abroad andfrom the Southwest, so that theycan complement their own resourcesmore adequately. For instance,Encyclopedia Britannica has a num-ber of movies with a Spanish sound-track which they have prepared forexport; some of these films maybe of use in the upper classrooms,

once they have been screened by acommittee of teachers.

Although bilingual teachers fromdifferent parts of the countryhave national meetings and publi-cations in which they can sharetheir experiences, bilingual chil-dren do not have such opportunities.Students in bilingual classroomsneed more chances for contact witheach other. It ought to be possibleto develop mineographed newslettersput out by the children themselvesand more opportunities to corres-pond in Spanish with students inthe Southwest and California.These kinds of efforts would makethe written expression of theirnative language a medium of greaterpersonal satisfaction and use.

25

Crescencia

This is something that when I re-call it makes me very happy becauseI remember the past when we weregrowing up. It was something verybeautiful and healthy. I rememberthat when I was growing up my fatherdedicated himself to working withox carts. They put two oxen likethis, then two more, then in themiddle the harness. The trunk iswhat goes close to the cart andthen in front two more oxen, theycalled this a fourth. In thosedays there weren't any roads onlymud. This is what my father dedi-cated himself to, to working onthis plantation, that was called"La Josefina". We lived between"La Josefina" and San Patricio.Then my mother in order to help myfather with the children made lunchesin the house. They were superblunches with sweet potatoes, yame,yautia, codfish, carne del morte,green bananas and so forth. Oneday she made one thing, the otherday another. For these lunchesall she was given was 12 cents.But this helped. My mother madesome baskets that were called ba-tea. She put the lunches in thisbasket, put the basket on her headand had to walk from about here(6th street) to 13th street, where

The following reminiscence is ex-cerpted from The Fourth Street i(Winter 1973), a bilingual magazinepublished on the Lower East Side bya group of young residents. Themagazine is recognized by the Com-munity School Board of District #Zas educational. material.

the men were cutting sugar cane.She took all those lunches, about40 or 50, in order to help my fatherwith the money she made. My brothers,the older sons walked the oxen, usinga long stick that had a nail on thefront end. They called this a"garocha". They used this to walkthe oxen so that they would walkfaster. At other times they usedsomething that is also known here, awhip. My father took the sugar caneto that place where the train stopped,"el desvio." There were some menthere to take the sugar cane and putit into the train cars which wouldtake it to the plantation where itwas ground down. This was laterbecause before they took it in theox carts. My father when he cameback from the plantation, somewhatof a slave, would come to plant seeds.He planted sweet potatoes, yautia,plantains, squash, beans, frijoles,petit pois, all those seeds. Theseseeds were planted by father, motherand us. When the vegetables grew, hetook them and hung them up, he tiedthem up until they dried up. Then hewould take out the seeds, usuallydone with beans. Part of what washarvested was for the owner of theplantation and the other part wasfor us. We had hens and chickensand turkey. We would go walkingthrough the grass and everywhere wewould find a nest with 15 or 30 eggs.There were times when we found 100eggs in one search. When my fatherhad the day off he would spend itplanting, planting and planting.My father would kill the big pigs,then he would take black pepper, ore-gano, garlic, crush it all together

26

and use it to salt the meat verywell. The meat was hung up on arope and left to dry. When youtook a piece of this meat it lookedlike it was cooked, it was verycrisp. We would take a piece ofthis meat, put some charcoal inthe fire and roast it.

We would take a piece of pipe (madeout of corn stalk) and an oyeho(the dried up leaf from a bananaplant) and weave them together.We wove it and wove it until wemade a receptacle for the milk.The cups used to drink the milkwere made out of coconut shells.We drank the milk straight fromthe cow. The milk was neverspoiled because the cows weremilked every day. Yes this wasthe life of the past, a healthyand good life. There weren't toomany luxuries or money. Rather, itseemed like there wasn't anymoney,but there was. You couldgo to the poorest home in PuertoRico -- the poorest ones werethose who had a long ranchlikehouse. This house had no floor;for the floor they had only earth.Well you entered this home andsaw that the family's clothingwas very clean and well ironed.The beds were made from sticks.They placed a stick at the topfor the headboard and one at thefoot, then two more sticks wereplaced on the sides. Then youtook many small sticks, placedthem side to side lengthwise un-til you made something that lookedlike a raft. You made a mattressout of palm leaves or banana plantleaves that had the same width asthe bed and placed it on top.

For light they used a lamp (hand-made). You took an empty tin can,that had contained evaporated milkor condensed milk, and you made acover for it. You filled the canwith koresene and put the coveron it. Then you would take the

cover and make a wick for it. Thiswick was made from an old shirt ora rag. This was the lamp. It madea great deal of smoke and turnedeverything black but it lit the house.Even though the lamp made so muchsmoke no one was blind and in thosedays almost no one got a cold. Every-one walked around barefoot and thereweren't as many illnesses as thereare now. Now there is a great deal

' of meat and other foods but what goodis it if it's not healthy. Beforewhat you ate was wholesome, healthyfood that helped a person. Therewasn't a threat that you couldn'tstep here or there barefoot becausesomething would get inside of you.There was no such thing. But now,now you can't walk barefoot becauseyou can catch this kind of infectionor the other. Before people plantedtheir own rice which they called therice of the land. You cooked thisrice and ate it, it had all the nu-trition that you needed and that'swhy the people were stronger in thepast. They didn't dress well, didn'thave any shoes. But they had thenecessary things and a little bit oftranquility.

Interview by Elsa Gonzales, transla-tion by Marta Rodriguez.

27

Learning to read ina bilingual contextRuth AdamsLillian LernerIn terms of its relationship to theprocess of learning to read, bi-lingual education means that a youngchild who enters school speaking pri-marily a language other than Eng-lish or the dominant language ofinstruction in the school, isfirst taught to read in his ownlanguage. Though he learns tospeak English as a second language,he is not delayed in his totallearning of school curricula whilehe learns the new language. Helearns to read.in Spanish or what-ever is his first language andalso does much of his other learn-ing in that language until his de-velopment in terms of English vo-cabul4ry concepts and understand-ing of larger language structureenables him to learn in both lan-guages. The purpose of school islearning; the language is merelya vehicle.

ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH

1. In the past, the curricular

Ruth Adams is chairperson of thedepartment of Elementary Educationin the School. of Education at CityCollege and professor of EarlyChildhood Education. Lillian Lerneris Reading Coordinator, New YorkCity Board of Education. This arti-cle is excerpted from a book onreading that they are currently pre-paring for publication.

emphasis in our schools focused onthe notion of "the melting pot." Alldifferences were to be fused, allpeoples were to be made into "Ameri-cans." Yet, we remain a pluralisticsociety, in search, still, of smootherintercultural relationships. Todaywe are even more aware of the con-nection between school success, eco-nomic security, and opportunitiesfor participating meaningfully inthe society than in the past. Butwe have also learned that such schoolsuccess must have a firm foundation,a good beginning. For young childrenjust beginning school, a smooth tran-sition between home and school andfrom oral language to the mastery ofwritten language is essential.

2. There are as many ways to teachreading as there are children. Nosingle method can provide for allvariances in the needs of any groupof children. Indeed, good teachershave always tried to use many dif-ferent ways to help children developskills in the highly complex act ofassociating printed symbols withtheir sounds and meanings. Onefactor, however, is common to chil-dren at the "learning to read age."They have spent four or five yearsdeveloping oral language patternsand listening to the oral languagepatterns of their families and friends.How can we help a child to rediscoverthese oral language patterns in theirprinted forms? Specifically how dowe do this with the child whose fouror five years were spent internaliz-

28

ing patterns in one language andwho is then expected to read inanother language?

The learning to read process isbased on tLe mastery of that re-lationship of oral to writtenlanguage, of the spoken word to itsgraphic counterpart. In order tomaster this process, the child musthave opportunities to use his de-veloping powers of visual and au-ditory perception as well is hisgrowing mastery of spoken language.He must have opportunities throughactivities which elicit his fullparticipation and interest. Suchactivities and curricular experi-ences, in the language which hespeaks and deals with easily, cre-ate the needed opportunities. Theabilities (that are needed in orderto learn how to read) themselvesgrow and can be used in a multitudeof situations.

3. Bilingual education is thusalso an alternative solution to per-ceptual training which advocatespractice on figures, dots, or lines.Reading in one's first language en-ables one to practice by learningin a language that one uses with-out struggle. It is the principleof transfer of training of meaning-ful wholes. (Most reading instruc-tional systems do not use children'sown language as a source. Begin-ning programs impose other lan-guages often based on word listsstandardized on populations manyyears ago on the basis of "frequencyof use." These were the only wordstaught as "reading words" in thereaders for many years. Even onthe so-called "experience charts"that preceded the readers, thewords the teachers stressed and"fed in" were those to be met laterin basal readers. Teachers who didthis, however, were always sur-prised to note that the childrenremembered their own words thatthey dictated to her, not the ones

that she "fed in" to the chart.)Jeanne Chall reported in a study shemade in 1965 that "even though per-ceptual training raises reading per-formance in the first two years, anearly language emphasis producesgreater positive results on readingin the upper grades" (when compre-hension is measured to a greater ex-tent). This approach is an earlylanguage approach in the child's ownlanguage.

Dr. Chall also stated in the samesection of her book that her research(emphasizing,"results in terms ofreading for meaning") was consideredvalid only up through the third grade.What are the results with childrenfor whom English is not a first lan-guage? What are the results for themand others in upper grades? Do thechildren who learned to read at thebeginning with a heavy "code-breakingemphasis" still excel?

Eric Lenneberg's research may behelpful here. He is a biologist aswell as a linguist. His findings sug-gest that a level of maturation ofthe functioning of the brain is neces-sary before the environment can helpthe child to use his language. Butthis stage, once reached, is outgrownby the early teens -- the junior highschool years. "The brain, then," hefinds, "behaves as though it had be-come set in its ways and basic lan-guage skills not acquired by thattime ... remain deficient for life."During early years the child acquireslanguage skills more naturally andeasily because of the flexibility ofbrain functioning. How much of thisvaluable time should the child who istrying to become bilingual spend de-coding?

What then of meanings? What of the chil-dren who come to school either with-out that strong language "bank" orwho come from homes in which anotherlanguage is spoken? Yes, what of thechild who has internalized a language

29

with a different set of meanings anda different set of grammatical struc-tures?

* * *

With normal health and such languagegrowth as described earlier as abasis, and with maturation of theperceptual and integrative abilitiesnecessary to do the "decoding", achild should begin to learn to read.He should begin easily if the teach-ing is in the language which he ha:'made his own and if that language ismade the basis of his instruction.

Worth mentioning here, in regard tothe above, is Sylvia Ashton Warner's"key word method." Her book, Teacher,is the personal account of a teacherin New Zcaland. In this inspiringbook, Mrs. Ashton Warner describesher method of teaching. Her conceptof Organic Reading is not new, asshe herself admits; but, somehow,coupled with her enthusiasm and dedi-cation, she has used it to createan overwhelming interest and zeal forreading on the part of her children.This is what is crucial for the con-cept of reading that we are advocat-ing. Organic Reading draws upon theexperiences of the children themselves.The author writes intensely of read-ing as a "living" activity. "Firstwords," she says, "must have intensemeaning for a child. They must bepart of his being."

As expressed by Rosa Inclan, direc-tor of bilingual programs in DadeCounty, Florida, language skillsand abilities do transfer from onelanguage to another. It seems ab-surd, therefore, Mrs. Inclan writes,"to ignore tie vast potential thatthe Spanish-speaking, literatechild 11)rings with him into theEnglish classroom. It is a peda-gogical crime still being perpetra-ted in too many schools in the UnitedStates to allow a child's originallanguage ability to deterioratewhile stubbornly insisting on build-

ing a second language from scratch,to ignore the wealth of listening-speak-ing experiences that should lay thegroundwork upon which to structurestrong reading and writing abilities,and to launch the monumental task ofbuilding from the bare ground as ifon a tabula rasa, with nothing onwhich to build. This can be evenmore absurd if there is the intentionto try to build up Spanish competencylater on, perhaps at the seventh orninth grade level."

Taking all of the foregoing intoaccount, therefore, two powerfulreasons for using the child's lan-guage and words when teaching him toread suggest themselves: one, isdevelopmental; the other is more dy-namic -- it is motivational. It isthe difference between working on apuzzle and working with a human --one waits to be assembled; the otherjoins in the process.

* * *

Developing expressive language inthe classroom (in. Spanish and English)is certainly as significant for thebilingual child as it is for English-speaking children, for it providesthe child with opportunities to ver-balize the language processes he hasinternalized, all of which contributeto the comprehension skills neededfor reading and the communication pro-cess as a whole. Freely expressed,language is a monitoring feedbackfor the teacher, signaling the degreeof conceptualization, the acquisitionof vocabulary concepts, and the inter-relationship of ideas.

For the bilingual child, encouragingspontaneous verbalization in thenative and the second language servesadditional functions, because it en-dows the child with status in thepluralistic society that, in fact,fre-quently does not bestow approval onthe foreign languages and accentsthat are associated with some minor-ity groups. By encouraging language

30

expression, and using both languagesherself, the teacher is communica-ting acceptance, she is saying,"What you have to say is importantto me in both of your languages."

Fashioning a classroom rich in op-portunities to develop languageconcepts is necessary for allyoungsters, but the bilingual childin particular should be surroundedby such an atmosphere in order forhim to have ample opportunity todevelop these language constructsfirst in his native language, wherepossible, and then in the secondlanguage, which is bridged throughthe native language. Animals, dailyevents, life, and death should besources for interactive language.The room must be arranged in a waythat will facilitate both the devel-opment of experiential learning andthe development of specific readingskills. There should be activitycenters but also there must be addedplaces where the child can have moreinformal types of experiences. Whatis important is that the conceptualframework be nurtured rather thanneglected because of an overemphasison formal structured language whichrequires the child to "say it inEnglish." The formal English struc-ture patterns may be useful in limit-ed degree, but they should not usurpthe place of experiential languagein the native language first andthen English which establishes vo-cabulary concepts, knowledge ofone's self, the community, and theworld around the child.

Aarbn V. Cicourel and Robert J.Boese, in "Sign Language Acquisi-tion and the Teaching of Deaf Chil-dren," (Functions of Language InThe Classroom, edited by CourtneyB. Cazden, Vera P. John, Dell Hymes,

Teachers College Press, 1972)make a fascinating case for the useof the native language as the lan-guage of instruction. They statethat deaf children born either to

MMININ11..

deaf or hearing parents and hearingchildren born to deaf parents firstlearn to communicate with their par-ents through sign language. Whenthese children enter school theyare taught via the "oral method"(reading lips, speaking, and thenreading and writing syntactically),which becomes a second language tothese children. The authors contendthat these children rarely becomeas fluent in the oral language asthey are in the sign language, andinvariably revert to sign languagewhen they are among "their own,"users of sign language. The schoolsshould acknowledge the sign languageand use it as a gradual introductionto the second language, the oral lan-guage, rather than negating an entireworld of learning that already exists.The authors add, "More obviously,the arguments apply to the childrenof minority groups whose first lan-guage or dialect must be recognizedand accepted in school."

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Some historyStan SteinerThe year Cristobal Colon set sailfor the Americas, the Spanish scho-lar Antonio de Nebrija completedwork on his Grammatica, the firstmodern grammar of the Spanish lan-guage. He proudly presented hiswork to Queen Isabella.

"What is it for?" the Queen asked.

"Your majesty," replied the Bishopof Avila, who had accompanied thescholar, "language is the perfectinstrument of empire."

The teacher picked up "The Primer"in English. He was saddened atthe thought of "teaching English inEnglish," but don Peyo was tiredof fighting with his superviser.And so he said to his class, "Well,children, we are goin' to talk inEnglis' today." He opened "ThePrimer" to a picture of a strut-ting cock. "Now, you know, 14(2114'is 'cock' in English, in American,"he began. "Read with me: 'Thecock says cockadoodledoo.' " Theteacher called on Tellito: "Howdoes the crock crow in English?"

"I don't know, don Peyo," the boyreplied.

"But look, boy, you've just readit," snapped the teacher.

"No," the boy said.

"Look, dummy, the cock crowscookadoodledoo," the teacher re-peated.

"Don Peyo, that must be the songof the American rooster," the boy

said apologetically. "The cock athome sings teocoroco.P "

In spite of himself the teacherlaughed loudly. So did the class.The laughter frightened the Camagueycock in the schoolyard, whichstrutted about flapping its luminouswings and crowing, "Cocoroco":

The linguistic contest of the cockswas related by the Puerto Ricanwriter Aberlardo Diaz Alfaro in hisdelightful tale "Peyo Merce TeachesEnglish." After seventy-years ofthe "Americanization" of the island,it seemed, the cocks still crowed inthat uniquely melodious Puerto Rican"Spanish" of the jibaro. For ittook hundreds of years to unlearn alanguage, and to forget a culture.Even for a cock.

But the deeducation of a childcould be achieved in the lifetimeof a child. Unlike a cock, a childcould be taught to forget who he wasas easily as he could be taught adifferent language.

On the island the de-education ofthe children began on a tropicalwinter day in February, 1901. Itwas the 169th birthday of "JorgeWasindon." The schoolchildren ofSan Juan, more than twenty thousandof them, were dressed in red, white,and blue shirts, pants, and dresses,and, waving little American flags,were marched down the gracious oldAvenida Ponce de Leon, then linedwith leisurely Spanish colonialhouses, beneath the royal palms bythe sea, chanting a song they hadbeen forced to memorize, in a lan-guage they did not understand, withwords whose meanings they did not

32

know:

America, America,God shed His graceon thee . . . .

In the plaza of every city on the is-land the schoolchildren were marchedthrough the streets that day bytheir American teachers. Laterthat year, on June 14, the chil-dren were marched into the streetsagain, this time to celebrate FlagDay. Once again, "Each of thou-sands of pupils carried a flag,and many were costumed in thenational colors (of America)," re-ported the Commissioner of Educa-tion Dr. G.G. Baumbaugh. "It wasa field day of American patriotism,"he said with pride.

All the schools began the day withthe children saluting the Americanflag. They then sang uncomprehend-ingly, by rote and in English,"America," "Hail, Columbia," "TheStar-Spangled Banner" and otherpatriotic songs. By 1900 theschools had already been named inhonor of Washington, Lafayette,Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson,Adams, Lincoln, Grant, McKinley,Longfellow, Prescott, Webster,Hamilton, Garfield, Horace Mann,and Peabody, the Commissioner re-ported. Everywhere the Spanishnames were obliterated. The speak-ing of Spanish was forbidden in theclassrooms. English was the new"instrument of the empire."

In one teachers' manual on TheTeaching of English in the Pr naryGrades of Puerto Rico, issued bythe Department of Elementary Edu-cation of the University years ago,teachers were told: "Each morningthe teacher should greet the chil-dren with, 'Good Morning.' Sheshould not be disturbed if at firstthe children do nothing but lookat her. She should not tell them

in Spanish what Good Morning means.She simply repeats 'Good Morning'each morning until the children hearthe expression so many times thatthey begin to respond more or lessunconsciously." But under no cir-cumstances was the teacher to teachin Spanish, use a Spanish word orphrase, or permit the child to speakin Spanish.

Nursery rhymes were to be recitedover and over, because the childrenwho did not understand the Englishwords would remember the rhythms.The picture books recommended forchildren in kindergarten and firstgrade were Little Black &mho, MotherGoose, and The Story of the ThreeBears:

We played the Three Bears.Luis was the Father Bear.Blanca was the Mother Bear.Juanito was the Baby Bear.Maria was Goldilocks.

Of course, there were no bears inPuerto Rico. It was the English,not the story, that mattered, as"Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush"became "Here We Go Round the MangoTree." The educational aim was thede-education of the children, so thatthey would unlearn the nursery rhymesof the island, forget its folkloreand culture, and become illiteratein the language of their fathers.

"The Spanish language is preciousto these people. All their history,and their traditions, and their civi-lization are bound to it," Commis-sioner Baumbaugh had written. If

the island was to be "Americanized,"it was necessary for the Spanish lan-guage to be eliminated. "The logicof the situation is that the Englishlanguage will become finally univer-sal," he said.

One of the first commissioners ofeducation, Dr. Victor S. Clark, in1899, had stated bluntly that the

33

"great mass" of "Puerto Ricans are asyet passive and plastic," and "theirideals are in our hands to createand mold." To do this would not bedifficult, he thought, "if the

schools were made American." Dr.Samuel McCune Lindsay of ColumbiaUniversity, who became Commissionerof Education in 1902, was even moresuccinct: "Colonization carriedforward by the armies of peace,whose outposts and garrisons arethe public schools of the advancingnations." The aim of the de-educa-tion was to "assimilate" the is-land, said Dr. Ricardo Alegria,the director of the Institute ofPuerto Rican Culture, to preparetransforming "Puerto Rico (into)another New Mexico or Arizona.And the schools were the instru-ment of that cultural assimilation."

* * *The policy was a failure. In 1920,when Henry Franck wrote RoamingThrough the West Indies, he notedwith dismay, "English is littlespoken in Porto Rico." He was "sur-prised" because he was "old enoughto remember what a splurge we madein swamping the island with Ameri-can teachers soon after we tookover." (At the time, CommissidnerBaumbaugh had sardonically said:"None of the (these teachers) knewSpanish, and some of them knewlittle English.") There had been"no progress made in teachingPorto Rico English in twenty yearsof American rule," Franck complained.If you stepped "out of one of thethree principal hotels of the capi-tal you are in a foreign country."

Governor Roosevelt voiced thesame complaint in the 1930s. "Whenwe arrived in Puerto Rico practic-ally no one spoke English. Spanishwas the language of the island."He "deliberately" set out "to changethis and to make Puerto Rico Englishspeaking." Some thought this policy

was an "attempt to stamp out localcustoms and culture, and substituteEnglish for Spanish," but that was"ridiculous," he said, for theUnited States, "at considerablesacrifice and expense," was seekingto reshape the island into "a realPan-American center of culture,where Cervantes and Shakespeare,so to speak, sat side by side."If such was his policy, it tofailed.

"In Puerto Rico the child comes toschool with little or no knowledgeof the English language," the teach-ers' manual of 1935 declared. Thatis still true of most of the chil-dren in 1973. Spanish is now, asit was then, the "language of theisland." In the mid-1950s Spanishwas brought back into the schools,by the Puerto Rican government, asthe language of instruction.

Paradoxically, as the schools onthe island were abandoning the pol-icy of enforced elimination of Span-ish, and planned de-education, asan abysmal failure in education, theschools on the mainland were adoptingthe discredited and discarded policyfor the hundreds of thousands ofbarrio children whose parents hadbeen enticed to the United Statesin the 1950s. It was historicallyan old instance of a colonial pol-icy, abandoned in the colonies,only to be embraced by the mothercountry. In school after schoolthe old immigrant imperative washeard: "This is America! SpeakEnglish!"

In those years of de-education asocial worker was said to haveasked a little barrio child todescribe how he felt in the schoolsof the city. The folklore of thebarrio has often retold his sad re-ply. He was, said the little child:"Alien in two lands, and illiteratein two languages!"

34

In his "Broken English Dream," theyoung barrio poet Pedro Pietrihad written:

To the united states we came- -to learn how to mispell our name...to fill out welfare applications- -to graduate from school without

an education . . .

From The Islands (Harper & Row, 2974)

The lack of opportunity to hearand see one's native languagein many forms, to see it onstreet signs, for example, isto be deprived of the many in-

formal learning experiences thatwe so deeply count on when we

are talking about first lan-guage: the radio, television,seeing it all over, hearingit from a great variety ofspeakers, all these thingscontribute to the fully de-veloping confidence cf thespeaker. If you -.ear yourlanguage in only one setting,and under certain circum-stances ("At home, you canspeak Spanish, but on theelevator or on the bus, youcan't"), then you begin tothink, "Perhaps I should bequiet or perhaps I should com-municate non-verbally." Theseattitudes have more to do withthe eventual development ofbilingual confidence thanmany of the instructionalstrategies that we now con-cern ourselves with.

Vera John, at the WorkshopCenter

En espanolThese poems, translated into theSpanish by Piiar Delago, are ex-cerpted from Spicy Meatball, Num-ber Five, which is written andcollated by the students of P.S.

75, Manhattan, with the help ofthe Teachers and Writers Collabora-tive.

A mi me recuerda cuando yo estabaen Ecuador y estaba en la escuelay cue cuando saliamos de'la escuelahabia un senor tocando la guitarray me dio mucha pena porque el estabasucio y tenia los pantalones suciosv rotos y estaba sin camisa y porese, me dio pena.

I remember when Tuns in Ecuador andI was in school and when we came outof school there was a man playing theguitar and it gave me much pain be-cause he was dirty and he had pantsthat were dirty and torn and he waswithout a shirt and for this gave memuch pain.

Moises Fuentes

Las personas oyen la musica En elconcierto de Musica. Las personasdicen que es una buena musica quenos alegra. Otra persona dijo: Megusta la musica intrumental. Y laspersonas siguen oyendo la musica.Y hay ninos que salen y entran acomprar dulces. Sigue llegando lagente y ya no se puede caminar. Yason las 12:00 de la noche. A lagente le da sueno y se va para sucasa Se duermen y al otro dia selevantan a las 6:00 A.M. para it a sutrabajo y los ninos a las escuela.

The people hear the music. In theMusic concert. The people say thatit is a good music that makes themhappy. Other people say: I like in-strumental music. And the peoplekeep on listening to the music. Andthere are children who go out and

come in to buy sweets. The peoplekeep on arriving until you can't walkanymore. It's twelve o'clock midnight.The people get sleepy and go home.They sleep, and the next day they getup at six o'clock in the morning togo to their work and the children toschool,

Ricardo Irizarry

35

Prionsia f3 0 MianainE amo:n.n McCann

The connection between culture andlanguage comes through clearly inthis excerpt from Eamonn. McCann'sWar and an Irish Town (Penguin, 1974).

We learned of the United Irishmen,the Fenian Movement, the Easterrising; of Emmet hanged, and Tonewho had cut his throat in his cellto cheat the English executioner;of Connolly who was wounded in theleg and could not stand up so theystrapped him to a chair to be shot;snatches from Pearse's speech atthe grave of O'Donovan Rossa:"The fools, the fools, the fools,they have left us our Feniandead ..." There were men in thearea who embodied the tradition --Paddy Shiels, Neil Gillespie, SeanKeenan, Old Republicans who hadfought in the past and been jailedand whose suffering represented acontinued contribution from ourcommunity to the age-old struggle.They were regarded with guiltypride by the great majority asliving out too urgently the idealsto which, tacitly, we were allcommitted. When Paddy Shielsdied everyone said that he was a"Great Irishman."

Frankie Meenan was of the samestamp and always resented the factthat he had to speak English to makehimself understood in the area. Heran classes in Gaelic for localchildren in a disused billiardshall in Chamberlain Street. Rowsof children, few of whom would ever

progress beyond school, would sitreciting in unison, "Ta me, Ta tu,Ta se, Ta si -- I am, you are, heis, she is," and wrestling with theintricacies of the vocative case.Women in the street would askFrankie: "How's he getting on at theIrish?," to which he always replied:"Oh, coming on, coming or." Fewever became fluent, but it was feltright to make the effort. Frankieprobably paid for the hire of thehall himself. He bought aboutthirty hurling sticks once and onSaturday mornings would take a crowdof us up to a field behind the Rose-mount School, distribute the sticksand try to teach us the nationalgame. The instructions were shoutedin Irish, "Anois, Buail e, buail e!"and "Ach, amadan, bloody amaian!"(Now hit it, hit it! Fool, bloodyfool!) when one missed the ball com-pletely for the nth time. Therewere always those who, privately,affected amusement at Frankie'sactivities, but no one openly deniedhim respect.

The Irish lessons and the hurlingclasses ended when Frankie was arrestedone night in 1957. It w.,2 during the

IRA's border campaign. He was cominghome when a police car stopped andhe was asked his name. He could havesaid, "Frankie Meenan" but, beingwhat he was, he said, "PrionstiasWANamain, to me ag dui abhaile" (I amgoing home), for which piece of bilin-gual impertinence he was taken to Crmn-lin Road jail in Belfast and held with-out trial for seven months.

36

The bilingualcurriculum:what is it ?Sound curriculum planning and devel-opment(is based upon informationregarding three basic elements: thestudent, his or her immediate com-munity, and the needs of society ingeneral. Information regarding thestudent is basic to the developmentof an effective curriculum. By thetime children enter school, they al-ready have developed particularskills, abilities, and interests.These must be identified and takeninto account if the curriculum isto be successful in motivating thestudents and generating their in-terest. Further, by using infor-mation concerning students in de-termining the content and processof the curriculum, the transitionfrom home to school learning canbe made easier for the children.The family and community fromwhich the child comes also pro-vide essential information regard-ing the attitudes, customs, and

cultural heritage of the childwhich the curriculum is obliged toincorporate. And if curriculum isto help make education a means ofpreparing children to enter theworld outside as productive andconcerned citizens, it must bebased on an accurate assessment of

This is excerpted from the U.S.Commission on Civil Rights'Mexican American Education Study,Toward Quality Education forMexican Americans (February 1974).

the needs of society and be respon-sive to those needs.

In short, if curriculum is to be aneffective instrument in helping allstudents develop their potential tothe fullest, it must be flexible andbroadly based. To what extent hascurriculum in the Southwest satis-fied this test?

Generally, curriculum has not hadthe flexibility or been broadlyenough based to develop the poten-tial of all students. As one ex-perienced educator has said, "Edu-cational programs are designed anddeveloped for the white Anglo-Saxon,English-speaking, middle-class popu-lation. If a child is not a "typi-cal child," if he is not Anglo-Saxon,you develop an incomputability be-tween the characteristics of thelearner and the characteristics ofthe educational program." This in-compatability between the Chicanostudent and the curriculum is mostevident in the areas of languageand culture.

LANGUAGE EXCLUSION

Oral language is the most basic ele-ment of any curriculum. This isespecially so in the early years ofschooling when children must depend

37

entirely on their ability to com-municate orally. The schools ofthe Southwest, as in other partsof the United States, use Englishas the dominant language of instruc-tion. Thus, in the formative years,reading and writing skills are de-veloped on the assumption that thechild has oral skills in the Eng-lish language. For Mexican Ameri-can children, this assumption isoften false.

Many Chicano children, by the timethey reach school age, have devel-oped a complete language system inSpanish, or, although they mayspeak some English, their domi-nant language is Spanish. Theyare ready to begin learning toread and write. But instead ofbeing encouraged to develop theseskills in Spanish and subsequentlyuse them to develop the same skillsin English, Chicano children findtheir language either ignored orprohibited by school authorities.

In response to the Commission'squestionnaires, principals in 30percent of the elementary schoolsand 40 percent of the secondaryschools surveyed in the Southwestadmitted to discouraging the useof Spanish in the classroom. Useof Spanish is further discouragedon an unconscious level by schoolofficals. One Southwestern edu-cator expressed the view that:"Th2 actual incidence of dis-couragement is probably muchhigher than Commission statis-tics show. Because the schoolshave for so long felt that Spanishis a handicap to successful learn-ing, they unconsciously foster un-acceptance and resulting discour-agement of the speaking of Spanishin school." Not only does thispractice fail to build on one ofthe most basic skills of Chicanostudents, but it degrades themand impedes their education byits implicit refusal to provide

411.111111011

for teaching and learning in Spanish.

A large proportion of Chicano chil-dren in the Southwest grow up speak-ing different dialects of Spanishwhich vary somewhat in vocabulary,grammar, and pronunciation from theso-called "standard" Spanish. Suchdialects may incorporate some Englishvocabulary, old Spanish words whichwere in common usage during the 17thand 18th centuries, and standardSpanish. Linguists agree that suchdialects are not distortions of thestandard dialect but companion dia-lects of the same language. Accord-ing to one major source: "The speak-er of a nonstandard dialect is not"confused" or "wrong" when hisspeech differs from the standard di-alect, but he is actually using adifferent language system." Schoolsin the Southwest could assist Chicanochildren to develop language skillsin both standard Spanish and Englishby accepting and building on theirparticular dialects of Spanish.Ideally, at the end of such a schoolexperience, Chicano children could betrilingual, making them proficient instandard Spanish, their own dialectof Spanish, as well as in English.However, Chicano dialects are viewedby many school officials in the South-west as illegitimate or as comprisingno language at all. Thus, as a Texaselementary teacher commented:

The Spanish that these littleMexican kids know is just apoor combination of Englishand Spanish slang. Actuallythese kids have no languageat all, because they speakbad English and bad Spanish.

Exclusion from the school experienceof the Spanish language, whether stan-dard Spanish or another dialect, re-sults in two serious consequencesfor Chicano students. First, a

Chicano child with little or no know-ledge of English finds it difficultto function satisfactorily in the

38

classroom. Second, because lan-guage is rooted in and reflectsa set of values of a particulargroup, exclusion of Spanish en-genders in Chicano children thefeeling that very important as-pects of his life--his communityand culture--are undesirable.

Some efforts have been made to de-velop language programs for Chicanostudents. These programs use avariety of teaching methods to

increase English language skills.The most commonly used languageprograms are English as a SecondLanguage and, to a lesser extent,Bilingual Education.

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

English as a Second Language (ESL)is a program designed to teachEnglish language skills withinthe regular curriculum prescribedfor all children. This programattempts to make non-Englishspeaking children proficient inEnglish by providing supplementaryinstructional sessions in Englishfor a specified time, generally 30minutes to one hour, during the day.In the ESL program, English is usedalmost exclusively, even with theyoungest children, whether thechildren understand it or not.

The major problems with ESL forSpanish speaking students inSouthwestern schools are thetheory underlying the programand its limited purposes. ESLis designed strictly as a tran-sitional language program andcontains no culture content re-lating to the Mexican Americancommunity or heritage. Thetheory behind using only ESL isthat a Spanish speaking child canbecome proficient in Englishthrough a brief period of train-ing in English classes and can

simultaneously learn course workin that language. Not only doesthis method fail to build on theChicano child's language abilityin Spanish, but it requires thatthe child learn a new language wellenough to function in that languageimmediately and for the majority ofthe day. Further, as one source hasstressed: "This method subtly, byminimizing the child's vernacular,places the home language in an in-ferior, unacceptable position."Though ESL can be effectively usedas a component of Bilingual Educa-tion, it is not, by itself, an ade-quate program for teaching Englishto Chicano children.

BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL EDUCATION

Bilingual-Bicultural Education hasbeen defined as "Instruction in twolanguages and the use of those twolanguages as mediums of instruction

for any part or all of theschool curriculum and includingstudy of the history and cultureassociated with the student's mothertongue. A complete program developsand maintains the children's self-esteem and a legitimate pride inboth cultures." An axiom of Bilin-gual Education is "that the bestmedium for teaching is the mothertongue of the student." The pro-gram develops reading and writingskills in the child's native tonguewhile simultaneously introducingEnglish language skills. The child'sculture becomes an essential componentof the entire school experience.

In general, Bilingual-BiculturalEducation builds on the child'sskills, such as language skills,rather than ignoring or suppres-sing them. The child's familiarexperiences, community, and culturalheritage are incorporated into theeducational program, rather thanbeing excluded. Course content is

39

often presented in Spanish alongwith free use of Spanish in teach-ing. As a result, children areable to respond more positvelyto a school and an educationalprogram which reflect their owninterests, abilities, and com-munity.

Bilingual-Bicultural Education hasbeen implemented only recently inselected districts throughout thecountry and then only on a modestscale. Many programs in the South-west are misnamed bilingual-bicul-tural programs but are actuallyfocused on teaching English andhave no course content or a cul-tural component. Such programsnot only distort the concept ofwhat Bilingual-Bicultural Educa-tion is but give an inaccuraterepresentation of the number ofchildren being reached by genuinebilingual-bicultural programs.Programs also vary considerablyby the number of grade levels in-volved, program structure, andlanguage dominance of students.

The Elementary and Secondary Edu-cation Act of 1965 (ESEA), asamended, provides under Title VIIspecifically for Bilingual-Bicul-tural Education. It stresses theimportance of conserving thenation's language resources andadvancing the education of allchildren, regardless of theirlanguage. Since 1969, when theprogram began, Title VII has fundeddemonstration Bilingual-BiculturalEducation projects throughout thecountry for non-English speakingstudents of various backgrounds.However, these programs reachonly a small percentage of theChicano children needing them.In 1969, 51 Spanish/English pro-grams, reaching nearly 19,000children, were funded in schooldistricts throughout the South-west by the Office of Educationunder Title VII. By the 1972-73

1111INIMII:=

school year, 123 projects reaching70,000 children in the area were be-ing funded. Though the number ofchildren in the Southwest beingreached by projects funded underTitle VII has more than tripled inthree years, the 70,000 students inthe program appear insignificant incomparison to the estimated 1.6 mil-lion Mexican American students inSouthwestern schools.

If the federal government has be-come actively involved in supportingBilingual Education, the States havenot. Of the five Southwestern States,only Texas has made provision formandatory bilingual programs forSpanish speaking children. Thus,it is left up to the individualschool district to decide whether bi-lingual programs are necessary andshould be provided for non-Englishspeaking students. Furthermore,though four of the States have allo-cated funds for bilingual education,such funds reach only a very smallpercentage of the students needingthe program.

CULTURAL CONTENT IN CURRICULUM

As noted earlier, curriculum is nei-ther neutral nor impartial but re-flects value judgments on customs,values, and life styles. Essentialto effectuve curriculum is the incor-poration of the culture as it mani-fests itself through the family, com-munity, and background of all students.These represent the elements studentsare most familiar with and on whichtheir education can be most effectivelybased. Further, as authorities inthe field have pointed out, develop-ing the child's "pride in his cul-tural heritage will increase his suc-cess potential, so that he will betterbe able to benefit from what theeducational system has to offer him."

Culture content in the curriculum is

40

evident in textbooks used at all gradelevels and pertaining to all subjectMatter. It also can be related inspecial courses or programs dealingwith the culture and history of par-ticular ethnic groups.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbooks provide the basis formuch of the curriculum. They areheavily relied upon in the educa-tional program by most teachers.In a survey of elementary andsecondary schools conducted bythe National Education Associa-tion, principals unanimously indi-cated that the textbook is the fo-cus of curriculum and as such hasthe greatest effect on what istaught in the classroom.

All textbooks impart value judg-ments about particular cultures.History texts clearly have thegreatest potential for includingcultural material, for they recordthe contributions of a particularpeople or nation. But texts in allcourses include culture content.One educator, after evaluating his-tory textbooks for Chicano culturecontent, found that:

The U.S. educational systemin part through the text-books has reinforced a

sense of Anglo superiorityand degraded the image ofMexican Americans and otherethnic minorities. Contentanalysis of a dozen popularU.S. history textbooks re-vealed little in these textswhich would specifically con-tribute to the pride of theyoung Chicano, but much thatcould assault his ego andreinforce a concept of Anglosuperiority.

As numerous textbook evaluators have

.1.611 11.1=:114

noted, little if anything is saidabout the contributions of Mexicansand Mexican Americans to the develop-ment of the Southwest. Indeed, ifany comments regarding Chicanos ortheir heritage are included in text-books, they are usually negative ordistorted in nature.

Literature texts, which purport tocompile or describe written worksrepresentative of American or Euro-pean writers, help develop in stu-dents an appreciation for writtenart forms. Few literature textscontain works by Chicano playwrightsand poets. Even works by MexicanAmerican authors are rarely in evi-dence in the literature texts, andstudents are led to assume that thereare no Chicano or Mexican writers orthat they are not accomplished enoughto be included in a text.

In the elementary grades, the ex-clusion of familiar figures and sit-uations from reading texts is evident.As one authority pointed out:

Though much has been saidabout the "Dick and Jane"readers and the inability ofthe Chicano child to relateto such characters, the basicreaders remain essentially un-changed. At best, Dick andJane are shaded to appearbrown, retaining their Anglofeatures; more commonly, how-ever, Dick and Jane and theAnglo family continue to bepresented as the ideal.

Readers in the intermediategrades as well fail to pre-sent Chicano life styles andculture, and by doing so ne-glect to develop stories aroundareas of interest and familiarityto the Chicano students.

Even mathematics textbooks carry cul-ture content which ignore Chicanos'skills and knowledge. The teaching

41

of mathematics involves familiariz-ing the student with numbers andtraining him to use those numbersin situations which may be of po-tential benefit to him. Problemsolving should involve charactersand situations with which the childmost easily identifies. However,most mothematics textbooks presentproblem solving situations involv-ing only Anglo characters and insettings which are often unfamiliarto Chicano children. Rarely is asituation given which directly re-lates to the experience of Chicanosgrowing up in a Chicano home or com-munity. Further, mathematics text-books and classes rarely refer toAztec and Mayan contributions to thedevelopment of numerical systems andcomplex forms of mathematics.

Though textbooks are a large partof what is presented in a curri-culum, much more goes into thetotal educational environment.This educational environment in-cludes the physical surroundingsof the classroom, such as picturesand displays on the walls and bookson the shelves. Other influencesare the songs, music and moviesused either formally or informallyby the school, as well as the fieldtrips sponsored by the school.

The educational environment shouldreflect the home and community ofall groups of children. The Chicanoinfluence on the educational envi-ronment of most Southwestern schoolsis, however, as one authority hasexpressed it, almwt non-existent.Pictures and displays in the class-room fail to show scenes of Chicanofamily and community life or few,if any, decorations reflective ofthe Chicano culture. Music andgames familiar in Chicano communi-ties are rarely used in the schoolsetting. Finally, field trips gen-erally focus on areas outside ofthe Chicano community and disre-gard areas of interest in the barrios.

11110..

SINGING

There are certain sounds that youhave to produce in learning a newlanguage that are not part and par-cel of your old language, and alsoyou need to have repeated experi-ences in knowing where to put yourtongue. But if you have to do thisin a situation where you are beinglooked at and judged, made to feel"did I do it right or wrong," thatis really not as useful as whenyou develop auditory judgment ofyour own: "Does it sound right?"The sooner you can tell yourselfwhether you are making sounds theway you wish to, the way otherpeople who speak English may bemaking them, the more adequatelywill you be able to do it. One ofthe best ways of acquiring thatjudgment is through songs, whereyou repeat certain lines again andagain and then improvise. In sing-ing songs, you are processing thesounds without focusing all thetime. The very rhythm of a songcarries you, carries the wholeproduction of language; if youdon't get the sound down the wayyou want it this time nobody reallyhears you because a lot else isgoing on, but you start feeling,it. You start feeling your mouth,your tongue, your teeth making newcombinations.

Vera John, at the Workshop Center

42

GuasabaraRalph Collazo

Past experience has taught me thatthere are three main factors in learn-ing: understanding, communicating, anda teacher who tries to understandstudent's needs. I know this becausein my primary years in elementaryschool I did not understand English,and the first and second grade teachersdid absolutely nothing to try andunderstand my needs. I was just ano-ther frustrated child sitting in aclassroom staring into space.

In 1951, when my family migrated fromPuerto Rico to the United States Iwas six years old. I can still re-member the narrow, old tenement buil-ding we came to live in. I can stillremember the fear of loneliness Ifelt when I first entered that buil-ding. I remember fighting back tearsbecause people, places, and things Iloved were no longer there. I nolonger had my grandparents to lean on.I no longer had trees to climb or themangos and the guavas I used to eatfresh off the trees. I could nolonger play in the rain because in mynew environment it was not the thingto do. I could no longer use a hugebanana tree leaf to slide down amuddy hill. I was deprived of manythings I never should have been de-prived of -- especially my nativelanguage.

Ralph Collazo is a student in the Bilin-gual Teachers Corps Program at the CityCollege of New York.

The first few words I learned in Englishwere not profanities that many used intheir daily vocabulary but words ofrejection. The words I remember themost are "geraraheer" (get out of here),"cherap" (shut-up), and "quajet" (quiet).The first grade classroom environmentintroduced me to "cherap" and "quajet"in a very confusing way. Any time Ispoke Spanish to my friends, the Englishspeaking kids would tell me to shut-up,and the teacher would tell me to keepquiet. I learned that both wordsmeant for me to keep my mouth shut, butI couldn't understand why the teacherused the word quiet and the kids theword shut-up. It was later on in lifethat I realized that the one who wasconfusing me was the teacher. She usedthe word quiet with nearly the sameauthoritative command as the kids whoused the word shut-up.

While I was in the first grade, theteacher separated the class into twogroups. The group sitting on the rightside, next to the windows, was thegroup of English speaking kids; thegroup sitting on the left side, next tothe closet, was the group of non-Englishspeaking kids. I happened to be sittingvery close to the closet because theonly words I knew in English were"cherap" and "quajet" and "geraraheer."

While sitting on the left side of theroom, all I can remember doing wasdrawing pictures. The teacher wouldgive the kids on the left side of theroom drawing paper and crayon, and the

MIM1711

43

kids on the right side would be learn-ing the alphabet, numbers, and simplewords.

My sister had been teaching me theSpanish alphabet ever since we livedin Puerto Rico. By the time I cameto New York and entered the firstgrade, I knew the Spanish alphabet byheart. One day when the teacher wassinging the alphabet I stopped drawingand listened as she pronounced eachletter. I noticed that some of theletters sounded similar to the let-ters in Spanish. I started lookingat the letters of the alphabet whichwere posted on cards, on top of theblackboard. I started saying thealphabet in Spanish to myself, and Inoticed that four letters were missing.That puzzled me, so I continued tolook at the alphabet trying to figureout why CH, LL, N, and RR were missing.As I was looking straight up at thealphabet, I heard the teacher screamout my name and say a few words to me.I didn't understand what she said, butI knew what she meant. I quicklylooked down at my drawing paper and con-tinued to draw.

Second grade was a more advanced repeatof first grade. I got a chance to opena Dick and Jane reader with the restof the class, but I was never calledupon to read because again, I was onthe slow learning side of the class.If only the teachers would have rea-lized I was trying to learn. If onlyI knew enough English to ask why fourletters were missing from the alpha-bet posted on top of the black board.If only I had bilingual education.

All my life I have been playing "catchup" because of those elementary levelfruitless years. I despise them, Iregret them, and I hate them just asI hated portions of elementary schooleducation, junior high school educa-tion, and high school education.

Today I am a college student and I love

it, but I still have a lot of groundto make up. No matter how hard I try,I will never reach the peak I couldhave reached. If only I had had theproper attention. "If only" is thequestion of my life.

Language skills seem to be very simpleto those who have mastered such skills.It is so natural, so easy for them tolisten, talk, read, and write thatmany tend to forget about the frus-trated child who is trying to learnbut does not comprehend. These indi-viduals who have mastered the Englishlanguage should try to recall why intheir infancy they began attending tosounds, or their first efforts tospeak. They should also try to remem-ber how they learned to read andwrite. It would be very useful ifthey could turn back the hands of timeto a period of learning frustration intheir lives. Perhaps by the experi-ence they have had, they could helpchildren acquire these skills moreeffectively.

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A framework forimplementingbilingual educationThis list of propositions is the re-sult of an analysis and synthesis ofinformation collected during thestudy. These propositions also fol-low the position of the researchteam with respect to the concept ofmodels in the contextual frameworkof education. The set is aimed atgenerating dynamic bilingual educa-tion programs that will transformand become transformed as a resultof their interaction with reality.The list is far from being exhausted;it only suggests the beginnings ofa process:

1. The two most important factorsbearing on the effectiveness of bi-lingual schooling are the multi-faceted involvement (representation,participation) of the community andlooking at the learner as the pointof departure for any curriculum de-velopment, teacher training, etc.

2. There must be a concentratedeffort to establish an image of thebilingual school as an educational

The article is taken from a reportprepared by the National Puerto RicanDevelopment and Training Institute,\Inc. The report, "A Proposed Approachto Implement Bilingual EducationPrograms," is one of the most cogentand thorough statements yet madeabout bilingual school programs, anddeserves a full reading. We arereprinting only sections of it.

institution where both English andthe native language are taught.These schools also have to losetheir image as corrective insti-tutions for the socially different.

3. The bilingual school should beseen by the students and theirfamilies as an educational insti-tution that facilitates the learningof English to deal with the societyat large, as well as learning forconceptual development in the na-tive language, while maintainingand improving the ties betweenchildren, their families, and thesocial groups to which these belong.

4. The image of the school, thecurriculum, and everything elseshould reflect the fact that whilebilingualism is a major concern ofbilingual school, the other curri-culum areas are of equal importance.

5. Both in terms of time and exten-sion there is probably a minimum ofbilingual schooling below which thereturns diminish or disappear. Suchschooling (even as is so with Eng-lish-medium work) should continue aslong as the child is in school.Within a single building, for exam-ple, aZZ first grades, aZZ secondgrades, etc., should be in the pro-gram. To involve but a single roomat each grade level is to createa situation where bilingualism can-not flourish.

45

6. The bilingual school can be seenas an educational institution wherethe non-English speaking child ac-quires English through a naturalprocess. By the same token, thistype of school should be seen as aschool where children whose nativelanguage is English acquire anotherlanguage. This is especially appro-priate for children of the ethnicminorities who have lost or neverhad the language of their foreparents.

7. In an ideal sense it is highlydesirable to teach Spanish to theAnglos too. In practical terms,unless one can establish a full two-way bilingual school, to combineAnglos and Hispanos in the sameclasses will greatly weaken theSpanish-medium work. This is sobecause the uneqUal background ofthe two groups forces the class intothe weak mold of foreign languageinstruction. The teacher cannot useSpanish with full strength and au-thenticity.

8. Academic curriculum should pro-vide learning activities integratingcontent and cognitive operations.For example, concerning storytellingactivities in Language Art programs,children should know the story con-tent, sequence, the theme, implica-tion and the inference from thestory.

9. The academic curriculum shouldprovide opportunities for the chil-dren to perform problem-solving exer-cises. For example, in the learningof science concepts, a child shouldnot only learn the concept that"things are heavier when wet" byviewing or touching it but also il-lustrate the concept through an ex-periment comparing the substancewhen it is dry and when wet on ascale. The important point is thathe must know and show all the stepsin order to solve the problem.

10. Academia curriculum should beappropriate to the child's level ofcognitive development. It has beenmade apparent by the cognitive stu-dies that some cognitive abilitieswill not emerge in certain age le-vels. For instance, the ability ofextracting certain classificationschema for various objects or theconcept of reversibility will notmanifest until 6 or 7 years of age.The modes of cognitive representa-tion also vary in different agelevels, usually progressing fromconcrete to abstract, from simpleto complicated.

11. A culture is acquired by direct,frequent, varied participation andexperience in all aspects of thelife of a group of people. A verylarge part of this acquisition occursoutside of the learner's awareness.It also follows that culture in thisdeep sense cannot be taught in cul-ture classes. Special effortsshould be made to incorporate intothe school, its curriculum, itsstaff and activities as many aspectsas possible of the life of thegroups to which the learners belong.Consequently, the entire curriculumshould be designed to represent andreinforce the culture of the childand an attitude towards a criticalanalysis of culture.

12. The amount and quality of lan-guage experiences in school shouldtake into consideration the languagemaintenance patterns of the commu-nity in the native language. Theaim will be to maximize the use ofbilingual instruction and peergroup interaction to develop theequal fluency and literacy in bothlanguages.

13. Mastery of reading and writingskills in the native language shouldprecede the introduction of readingin the other language. Unless the

46

child indicates an interest to readin the other language sooner, thereading should proceed from his ex-posure and oral ability in the na-tive language.

14. Language in terms of structureor forms should not be taught as asubject. For example, English as aSecond Language or Spanish as a Se-cond Language programs focusing onthe drill of certain language aspectsshould be eliminated.

15. Development of language compe-tence (including student's dominantand non-dominant language) isachieved through engaging the chil-dren in a content activity condeztedin the target language. For example,while the teacher is demonstratingthe activity he can be discussingwhat is happening in simple language.He does not stop the demonstrationto ask the child any questions, hesimply talks, as if to himself,while he is performing the activity.The child can then repeat the ac-tivity without resorting to lan-guage. While he is busy figuringout how to do whatever he is doing,he hears the teacher, and perhapsother children talking about it.Soon enough, he will learn to asso-ciate certain vocabulary terms withfamiliar objects, and all the whilehe is listening, his language learn-ing strategies will be activated.Gradually, he will begin to speak.And when he does, no correctionswill be necessary, as the errorswill "iron themselves out" just asthey did in the first acquisition.

16. The use of Spanish as a mediumof instruction and other activitiesis a much more powerful and effec-tive means of learning and teachingSpanish than studying and teachingit as a subject. Instruction inthe language per se should be anever-present concern of the teacher,but should be incidental to other

more important activities.

17. Maximizing inter-relationshipsbetween subject matter: It hasbeen stated before that using thelanguage to teach something shouldreceive more consideration thanteaching language as a subject forits own sake. This automaticallyrelates two formerly independentfields -- language and subject matterlearning. For example, the learnercan become aware of certain alge-braic phenomena like language equi-valents of addition, permutationsand combinations. Or, by focusingon melody, pitch or volume he willbe working with acoustics. Acous-tics can also be a topic in rela-tion to the use of language in dif-ferent social situations, emotionalloading, connotations, etc. Somephysiological correlates of human,animal sounds can be studied as partof what is traditionally called "bi-ological sciences." These relation-ships can be extended and/or re-fined, making them also relevant tothe learner, his immediate commu-nity, his culture, etc. In a simi-lar fashion, any activity of any"subject matter" can be analyzed tosee direct or indirect implicationsfor and from other subject matterareas. In addition to the effectson the motivation of learner, anew awareness about knowledge willbe developed.

18. There should be no such thingas a special "bilingual method" ofteaching. During Spanish-mediumperiods the teacher and pupilsshould act and work as if therewere no other language in theworld, and as if the child's en-tire education depended on thatclass. This means, essentially,that one language (or content inone language) should never betaught in terms of another lan-guage.

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19. Presentation of the same subjectmatter content in two languages isunnecessary. This is nothing morethan a disguised method of trans-lation. Transfer does not de-pend on the redundant use of twolanguages as medium of instructionfor the same concepts or skills,but on the proficiency in the useof the two languages. Further-more, repetition only will serveto make the learning experienceboring, thus creating indifference,passivity, withdrawal of attention,etc. A better approach is to pro-vide parallel or complementarylearning experiences that will ac-quaint the learner with the termi-nology used in both languages forthe same subject matter. For ex-ample, in talking about insects, onelanguage can be used to learn aboutthe reproduction of insects whilethe other language is used as avehicle for learning about theswamp ecology whi_Ch includes in-sects.

20. The mastery of the content ofthe activity conducted in the non-dominant language initially shouldbe independent of the child's com-petence in that language. For ex-ample, science activities that in-volve demonstration and manipula-tion of concrete objects such asgrowing plants or caring for ani-mals.

21. The delicate question of dialec-tal variants of a language should beresolved by (1) using the child'slanguage in the school (respectingit, studying it, writing it) while(2) moving steadily, broad-mindedly,towards adding another variant tothe child's repertory -- the univer-sal variant of that language. Theteacher, preferably, should com-mand both the "dialect" and the"standard."

22. Learners should be exposed to

two adult figures of authority --one dominant in English and one dom-inant in the other language. Theyshould have a minimum level of under-standing and preferably a speakingknowledge of other language.

23. It should be always kept in mindthat while one can be bilingual atsome stage of life, there can be ashift to monolinguism in the lan-guage that is associated with social,economic and political power.

24. The continuity of school and homeis fostered by reproducing in theclassroom environment selected as-pects of the "natural environment"which can promote learning. Thisenables the child to see the rela-tion between learning and his en-vironment so that the school experi-ence flows from the real experienceof the child.

25. The learning situations shouldbe flexible enough to accommodatethe mode of presentation in termsof curriculum implementation. In-dividual learning is needed in cer-tain situations, small group instruc-tion in others, grouping by languagedomination in another, etc.

26. There is no universal groupingmethods according to language dom-inance since different learningsituations demand different types ofgrouping. At times, it is advisablethat a homogeneous grouping be em-ployed in activities such as learn-ing to read, while heterogeneousgrouping can be used for situationsaimed at developing conversationalskills.

27. Sequence of curriculum presen-tation should evolve out of thechildren's interest rather than be-ing determined by rigid scheduling.Rigid scheduling dampens self-ini-tiated activity.

28. Major objectiveniques should be tovation to learn anddent's independenceprocess.

of teaching tech-maximize moti-to increase stu-in the learning

29. Do not correct children. Self-correction is a function of languagematuration. Evidence is that allchildren acquire their native lan-guage successfully without externalinterference. Frequent externalcorrection dampens child motivationand initiative.

30. It is recommended that teachersrespond to the content of what thechild is trying to say or do ratherthan the form of what he says ordoes. For example: If a child says"want milk" it is recommended thatthe child be given milk if the situ-ation is appropriate (lunch, snacktime) rather than saying "please re-peat -- I would like some milk" be-fore giving it to him.

31. Any statement about "teachingmethod" would be equally pertinent toall education, both Spanish-mediumand English-medium. For example, itis probably true that many teacherstalk too much, that their interac-tion with learners is excessivelylimited to questions susceptible toone or two-word answers. This meansthat these teachers need help tounderstand and use many techniquesto elicit a great deal of meaningfulspeech.

32. The stress in the interactionbetween the adult and a child shouldbe on affection as opposed to pun,-ishment; emphasizing respect andavoiding paternalism. This kind ofinteraction should lead to a changein the attitude that a child is athing or an object that can bechanged or manipulated because "itbelongs to us."

33. Use of peer group learning should

1111=

be maximized both for language andnon-language situations. Studentswith different skills, backgroundsand interests can be grouped toge-ther. For language learning it hasbeen shown that children learn morefrom their peers than from "others"in the schools. The same is truefor other subject matter areas.

34. There should be a plan to createfrequent staff interaction. Science

teachers, for example, rarely havecontact with English or Social Stu-dies teachers. Peer learning is aseffective for adults as it is forstudents. This activity is instru-mental to provide a "whole school"perspective and to offer optionsfor greater variety and depth oflearning activities.

35. Teachers should have the power,responsibility and skills to planand develop their own curriculumwhenever necessary. Not all com-mercially available materials areequally effective and relevant formany specific situations. Thismay be due to the fact that theyare often not prepared by those whohave to use them. Given propertraining and power, no teacher needsto accept all materials offered.They should be free to determineclassroom format such as "open" vs."traditional."

36. It is not necessarily a primequalification that teachers in bi-lingual schools be "bilingual."Since one group of teachers areSpanish-medium workers and anothergroup English-medium workers, eachneeds to be competent as teachersin only one language. Of course itis psychologically advantageous forall faculty, etc., in the schoolbuilding to know both languages,but it is far easier to find twoteachers, one for Spanish and onefor English, than to find two tea-chers, both of them equally comps --

49

tent in both languages.

37. The experience of having learnedto be a teacher through English plusthe ability to talk Spanish does notprepare a teacher for Spanish-mediumwork. Good knowledge of the languageby the teacher implies knowledge ofthe literature, songs, folklore, geo-graphy, dialects, history, etc., ofpeople who speak the language inquestion.

38. Teacher training should be fo-cused on the learner; therefore, ma-terials and teaching skills shouldbe tailored to actual student'sneeds. It should include thingslike:

(a) Use of observations as toolfor assessment.

(b) Designing and development ofcurriculum based upon obser-vations.

(c) Survey of community.

(d) Understanding and knowledge offundamentals of subject matter.

(e) Design and change of physicallearning environment.

(f) Development of criteria forselection and/or developmentof teaching materials.

39. Teachers should be skillful andpatient observers of skills, interest,and difficulties of learners. Obser-vations will provide the basis formeaningful curricular activities.For example, if Student A has theability and patience to assemblesmall objects, the teacher can pro-vide appropriate materials such asconstruction kits of all kinds to beassembled by the child. These kitscan be relevant to curriculum (e.g.students are talking about transpor-tation; this student can be assem-

bling model airplanes, cars, boats,etc.). Student B may be interestedin playing with water. Possibili-ties like studying such propertiesas solubility, fluidity, and buoyancywill serve as guidelines for activi-ties and materials. Student C has adifficulty in working with fractions.Further observation shows that thisstudent has not been exposed to con-crete situations dealing with whole-part relationships. Learning mater-ials and activities related to avail-able things like algebricks or card-board-prepared sets of whole andparts can be introduced. In summary,active use of existing interests andskills can generate new ones.

40. There will always be an effort onthe part of outsiders to force eval-uation of bilingual schooling on thecriterion of test scores, particu-larly reading scores. This is mis-guided, unfair, and should be stout-ly resisted. Reading is only onefactor among many, which include in-creased joyful participation of thechildren in their schooling, re-duced absenteeism, reduced socialconflict, increased involvement ofthe community. Above all, evalua-tion should be formative, feedbackfor self-correction and the eventualdevelopment of the a priori "model"into a true "model," i.e., exemplaryprogram.

41. Formative assessment should aimat diagnosing, finding probablecauses and proposing alternatives.A basic concern should be to knowwhether learning is or is not takingplace and about the possible whys tothe whats. As part of the program,everybody has to be involved in ob-taining, providing and analyzing in-formation. Staff interaction needsto maximize so that information isused continously in an integratedfashion.

42. The major function of adminis-

50

tration is decision-making. It shouldprovide sound financing, facilities,equipment and personnel management,in addition to setting policies incooperation with teachers, parents,students and community, and imple-menting those policies. In short,the administration should be goal-oriented, humanistic, dynamic, flex-ible, trained, forward-looking, in-volvement- minded, progressive, par-ticipatory, effective, democratic andalternative seeking.

43. The administration should be goal-oriented and objective. The adminis-trative personnel should be trainedin scientific decision-making andhuman relations. They should, on acontinuous basis, be involved in thelearning so that they can have first-hand knowledge of the actual experi-ence of teachers and students.

44. The administrators should involveteachers, students, parents and com-munity leaders in decision-making bycontinuously soliciting their ideasin solving day-to-day problems andin setting policies. Participationin decision-making will motivate allinvolved to strive harder and cooper-ate better in implementing decisionsbecause of the feeling of responsi-bility on the part of the partici-pants.

45. Effectiveness and not efficiencyshould be the aim of administration.Effectiveness means the extent towhich the goals are being met where-as efficiency indicates the input-output relationships.

46. Continuous and systematic datagathering, assessment and feedbackshould be a part of the administra-tion task. The assumption is thatdata on a day-to-day experience canand should be used to improve thesystem performance on a continuousbasis.

47. The administration should bekept abreast of pedagogical, tech-nological and social advances sothat they can incorporate the appro-priate ones into the system on acontinuous basis.

48. A culture is imparted and ac-quired by direct, repeated andvaried experiences outside thelevel of consciousness. Cultureshould not be "taught" separatelyin classes. Therefore, the teachingof culture cannot be confused withthe teaching of folklore, historyand artistic expression. Theteaching of components of the experi-ences of the learners' culturalgroup is a very good thing andshould be encouraged. Yet, this isonly a limited aspect of culture.Culture is a much more inclusiveterm that deals with what a groupof people think is real and ideal.

49. The only way that a culturallymeaningful curriculum can be de-veloped is to involve people whoseculture one wants to teach on aday-to-day basis. This is truebecause culture "resides in" and is"transmitted by" people on thisbasis.

50. The teaching of culture shouldproceed from an understanding thatthis concept is useful in seeingsimilarities between groups ofpeople as well as differences, butthat differences within culturesmay be greater than between cul-tures.

51. Culture is the total "real" andthe "ideal" experiences of indivi-duals that get generalized so thatthey become distinctive character-istics of the group these indivi-duals belong to. If this is so,the term bicultural is a contra-diction in terms. This would sup-pose that culture is equivalent to

51

language and can be acquired in thesame way. There is no theoretical orempirical evidence that can supportthe concept.

52. The effectiveness of native lan-guage as a medium of work in theschools is tied to and will dependeventually on the status of it as alanguage of the people outside of theschools. Although there are a largenumber of socio-cultural factorswhich determine that status, a sum-mary word is "prestige:" in theeyes of the non-native and of thenative speakers themselves. Thelatter is a function of the qualityand quantity of creative literaryand other production in the languageand the extent to which it Js thoughtof as the precious, idealized symbolof being Puerto Rican or being Chi-cano, etc. Herein lies the gravestweakness of the bilingual educationmovement, and here is the placewhere much work must be done.

53. As a part of the campaign to givemore prestige to a language such asSpanish (and thus facilitate thechild's learning) there are many"ambient factors" that should heattended to:

(a) Signs in the school (even itsname) should be beautiful, andin Spanish.

(b) School bulletins, notices,etc., and forms for the useof teachers, pupils and par-ents should be in Spanish.

(c) Merchants should be encouragedto use signs and ads in Span-ish and these should be notedin the school's work.

(d) The principal and the cleri-cal workers and janitor, etc.,should be vigorous speakersof Spanish and should be en-

couraged to use it freely.

(e) Spanish should be used inmany prestigious, publicways in the school, e.g. atassemblies and outside ofthe classroom.

(f) There should be a schoolpaper (at least half inSpanish) to which the pupilscontribute.

54. Research in the United Statesdoes show (J. Coleman, C, Jenks) thatthe child's family, the community,and the immediate society in whichhis life enfolds are more powerfuleducative influences than the schoolitself. Two corollaries flow fromthis: a) that the mutually-rein-forcing relationship between theschool and this immediate societyshould be made as strong as possible,and b) that if the school cuts thechild off from the influence of thatimmediate society it is cutting himaway from his main source of educa-tive strength.

55. Although Spanish-medium work (bi-lingual schooling) is a powerfuleducational tool, it is more profi-table to think of it not as a peda-gogical innovation but as a broadsociological movement. Any bilin-gual schooling project should betied to efforts outside the schoolto achieve social justice.

56. Community should be involvedthrough representation and parti-cipation in the program's staff andits educational activities. Theconcept of a school as a center forleadership in learning embodies theidea that the use of the differentexperiences of humans in a relevantcontext is what constitutes thebasis for learning and motivation.Community representation will pro-vide an array of relevant experi-

52

ences, information and perceptionswhich, when analyzed and used in aprocess of participation, will pro-vide the whole staff and the commu-nity some of the necessary bases todo education, which means learning,which means transformation. Parti-cipation in a dynamic model meansactivity with power, not the timidpassivity of executing, implementing,tokenism, paternalism, or just beinga member.

57. Community involvement should bedifferentiated from involvement ofpolitical leaders in the community,and it should proceed to see thecommunity as a source for fulfil-ling many of the educational needsas opposed to limiting it to poli-tical managerial involvement. Anemphasis should be made to iden-tify social agencies that are dailyused by the community, i.e. bodegas,barbershops, churches, and recruitparticipants from these sources inorder to fill educational needs, topass information, to receive feed-back, etc. This is of special im-portance in the bilingual school,where there are needs that cannotbe met by relying on the profes-sional teaching staff or by buyingcommercially made materials.

58. Parent participation in mostschools departs from a model whichmay not be always true of the so-ciety at large and is certainly notalways true of ethnic minorities.This is the model of an isolatedfamily unit made up of a father thatworks, a mother that stays at home,and a few children of close age thatgo to school. The role of other kinsuch as grandparents, older siblings,fictive (i.e. compadres) and truefriends of the family has been under-estimated. Since there is tremen-dous variation in the pattern ofparental employment, with somefathers unemployed and many mothersemployed outside the home, the care

of the children is often shared bya number of people. Consequently,the goal of the parents' partici-pation should be expanded to the con-cept of family participation.

59. Communication between the schooland the family should be approachedusing a combination of ways. Writtenmemos in both languages have theirplace but these have built-in limita-tions. Between people there is anetwork system that develops naturallyor that can be activated. This net-work system is built as people com-municate among themselves, espe-cially between friends and kin andinvolves the passing on of informa-tion and the recruitment of poten-tial participants. The importantfact is that this social networksystem can serve as a monitoringsystem of feedback for the school.

The notion that parents and teachersare as torn in their language loyal-ties as their children--torn on thequestion of Spanish or English domi-nance, say--is a very, very criticalone. For me to talk about psychologyin my native language, Hungarian, forexample, is virtually impossible be.-cause I learned psychology as anEnglish speaker and thinker. The lan-guage in which we learn something isusually the language in which we arecomfortable in dealing with the wholearea of related meanings and experi-ences. So if a teacher has beeneducated in English but her nativelanguage is in Spanish and she is nowexpected to teach in Spanish thenthere are many, many supportive ex-periences that she needs in order tobe able to teach, fully and creatively,particularly in an open classroom whereyour own feeling of self confidence andyour feeling about yourself as a sourceof English for the children is so cru-cial.

Vera John, at the Workshop Center

53

My uncleBaltazar MontesOne day, when Baltazar and I sat downto order science materials, we beganto talk about what science means toyoung children and how it could bedeveloped in the classroom. I toldhim many of the children in the schoolhad experiences that could lead tofurther inquiry. For example, manyof them had visited Puerto Rico andcould tell a great deal about the sugarcane industry- -the planting process,and so forth. It was at this pointthat Baltazar shaking his head, andsmiling, began the story of his uncle.

Bonnie Brownstein

I asked my uncle about the sugar canein Puerto Rico. I asked him where itgrows. He said it's in the Canaberalesof Fincas which is another wordfor the sugar cane plantations. Hesaid we would have to take a trainto the country to the centrales(molinos) where the sugar cane iscrushed and melted and it becomesa melted mass of sweet thick pudding.When it cools off it turns solid,into a mass of candy. He said thatthere are containers that will giveshape to all this melted sugar canethat turns dark brown. It is brownsugar. And he said that when it ispurified this brown sugar turnswhite. He enjoyed watching themelted sugar cane in. big containers-- as big as a large pot -- a largemetal pot -- like the water towerson top of buildings. The centraZes(molianda) is where all the menand women work together to cut thesugar cane and afterwards celebrateit when the sugar cane turns intocandy. These people live in thefincas and their families take theirchildren to school in the finca or toa small town near by. The mainbuilding or house is about threeblocks from the ovens and this is

where the sugar cane's warehouse

is taken care of by the owners wholive in a larger home right next toit. The workers live spread outaround this area and are mostly thejibaros who are most of the day outin the field cutting the sugar canewhen it's ripened. They usually waittill the sugar cane reaches a height ofabout four feet and wait to cut it ingroups. Afterwards it is picked up bylarge trucks of about five tons at atime. Then it is taken to the molinoswhere the sugar cane is melted intothis brown mass and is turned into sugar.Sometimes my uncle sees the trucksloading the sugar cane into ships andit's taken to other countries in itsnatural form so that sugar cane is animportant export of Puerto Rico. Hesaid that the sugar cane grows on veryfertile soil and it needs 1:o be re-planted every year. First they clearthe fields by burning the dry skinswhich were left behind after the sugarcane was cut and stripped. The nextharvest will start the new cycle ofsugar cane. The interesting part, myuncle said, about the sugar cane plan-tations, is that one lives in it andwill go horseback riding in order toget from one place to another. It isa beautiful experience when at nightyou hear the music played and the gui-tars of the farmers and the folk songsof sugar cane and the molianda makethe night come alive. Everyone comesout of their homes and meets in themain corridor which is usually thelandlord's house. It is a way of cele-brating the end of a long working dayin the moZianda. Getting ready tostart the next morning at sunrise. Sothat the next day is like somethingthat everyone looks forward to.

Baltazar Montes is Coordinator ofthe Bilingual Program at P.S. 87.

54

..gwasoma

CenterpublicationsI LIKE THE WAY I AM RIGHT NOW by Jose LuisPizarro

THE WORKSHOP CENTER SAMPLER, edited byRuth Dropkin

TEACHING BILINGUAL CHILDREN, edited byArthur Tobier

SCIENCE IN THE OPEN CLASSROOM, editedby Ruth Dropkin

EVALUATION RECONSIDERED, edited byArthur Tobier

EXPLORATIONS OF VISUAL PHENOMENA byEleanor Dimoff

READING FAILURE AND THE TESTS byDeborah Meier

THE OPEN CORRIDOR PROGRAM - Handbookfor Parents

THE OPEN CORRIDOR PROGRAM - Spanishversion

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