Speech #970241337

Learning to type by touch is roughly analogous to the learning of a new language. If a typing teacher allows her students to look at their hands while they are learning to type. this action will in time become habitual and the stu. dents will never be able to type with any appreciable speed. In the same way. immigrant students in bilingual programs become habituated to responding in their native language to their bilingual teachers and aides and find it difficult to ever reach a point in which they no longer translate from their first language to English but instead think in English when they are speaking English. But critics of bilingual education apparently have scant understanding of second language learning and so there is little reason for optimism about the establishment of alternative programs to bilingual educationprograms that would promote rapid and efficient learning of English so that young immigrants would be in a position to take advantage of the same educational opportunities that their Americanborn schoolmates have. Instead it appears that bilingual programs will endure and the bilingual bureaucracy will remain prosperous and politically powerful until the time when there is sufficient public recognition that it is against the public interest. and certainly against the best interests of immigrant children. that bilingual education continue.