Should Schools Separate Non-English Speaking Kids?
At first blush, I would have said separating non-English speaking kids from their English speaking peers at school is a segregationist tactic that hinders the chances of immigrant children from success.
But a New York Times story that follows kids at the Cecil D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., begs the question – if kids can succeed separately, wouldn’t throwing them in with English-speaking kids be the real hinderance to academic success?
The story follows a group of kids in the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) program at Cecil D., kids from a host of Latin and South American countries plus China, Sri Lanka and more. These kids aren’t just learning English while their peers study Spanish; they’re in an ESOL classroom for social studies, math and almost every other subject. And as their teacher – an immigrant herself who was the first in her French-Canadian family to learn English when they moved to the U.S. – points out, there’s a vast difference between the words they pick up from their English-speaking classmates in the cafeteria and those used in a classroom. No one is talking about “imperialism” at the lunch table.
In a story recently about a mid-western private school that’s banned kids from speaking anything but English within its walls, I focused on the efforts to make American kids more competitive in the global economy by encouraging bilingualism. Being exposed to immigrant classmates is GOOD for American kids.
I would say, overall, the opposite is true too. I learned best in the assimiliation language courses in college; when the professor refused to speak anything but French for the course of the day. Was I confused at first? Oh yeah. I wasn’t out in left field, I was in the parking lot. But slowly, you can’t help but learn. Beyond language, there’s also exposure to American customs, and cultural assimiliation, to some degree, is necessary to survive. Kids should retain a cultural identity, but they need to at least understand which new customs they are adopting – or avoiding.
It’s a debate I don’t know that any educator can truly answer. The kids at Cecil D. are performing well on tests, they say they’re happy (watch the video), and the school does introduce them into “mixed” classes as their English language skills develop. Perhaps that’s the real answer – starting with segregation that has a logical endpoint, segregation that results in assimilation.
What do you think? Would you fight this if it happened at your kids’ school?
Image: New York Times
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yes I think Schools Should Separate for Non-English Speaking Kids?
I taught high school ESOL in a school in Fairfax, VA for eight years, and I can say that both ESOL-only and classes with English-speaking peers are beneficial. When students are first learning English in our county, they take about half of their classes within the ESOL program, which would include ESOL versions of history, science, and language arts. The purpose of these classes is to teach them the academic English they need for success in classes with their peers in year to come. Also, these classes introduce them to American-style instruction, which is often vastly different from instruction in their home countries. Their non-ESOL classes (math, PE, and electives) are fully integrated, so they have some interaction with native English speakers.
As students progress through the program and improve their English, they gradually take more non-ESOL classes, some with the support of an ESOL teacher in the classroom. I used to team with a biology teacher, for example, to help make instruction more accessible to my students. They do have to pass the same state-mandated standardized tests as their peers, after all.
I believe that our program works very well in most cases. Yes, some of our students don’t graduate until they’re older (20 or 21-years-old in some cases, depending on their academic background and age of arrival in the US), but they’re able to gradually take more and more classes for graduation credits as time goes on and their English skills improve.
Truly, the best way to learn academic English is in an academic context. The best way to learn social/conversational English is through interaction with native English-speaking peers. I definitely cannot imagine totally segregating ESOL and native speakers. I equally cannot imagine throwing a new English speaker (particularly if he/she hasn’t had a strong academic background) into a full immersion experience without any support.
I do realize, however, that our county is unique, in that we have lots of resources for our large ESOL population. I’m sure that isn’t the case in many areas of the country.
I teach at a largish state university. Since I ask students about language background (it’s relevant to the course material), I know a certain number of our students– at least a few in every class– immigrated to the US as school-age children. When these students have expressed an opinion about their grade schools’ and high schools’ English as a second language (ESL) programs, it has universally been negative. It’s worth noting that they rarely are willing to express an opinion– it’s a sensitive issue for them. These students have unanimously said that their ESL classes were a waste of time; that ESL took them away from content-based classes; that ESL students were ostracized socially; and that they feel they would have learned English faster if they had been mainstreamed.
I think it’s pretty widely agreed among educators that ESL programs, done right– in particular, heavy on content-based instruction– can really help students academically. It sounds like the program reported on in the article is doing it right. However, it appears that the vast majority of these programs are not, currently, doing it right.
I went to a german school starting when I was in 5th grade. When I started, I didn’t speak three words of German. The school I went to had a program for foreign kids. They segregated all of the us (American, Tailandish, Irish, Russian, Polish) together first to LEARN German. We had class, but while learning, new 5th grade geography, say, we had to also re-learn the countries, oceans, etc we’d known for years in German. In math, we learned new, 5th grade math, but we had to first memorize our multiplication tables in German.
If we’d been in the regular class with the German kids, we ALL would have been SO behind, just from having to re-learn things we already knew in english, that it would have been difficult to ever catch up.
I sincerely believe that this is the best way.