Speaker. I will be offering an amendment to the education bill to preserve English as our common language. My amendment will do away with the costly. bloated Federal program that has accomplished nothing in 25 years except impede immigrant children from assimilating into the American mainstream. Mr. Speaker. Federal bilingual education was designed to teach English to the children of immigrants and to bring them into the mainstream as quickly as possible. But what have we gotten for our hundreds of millions of dollars every year? Dropout rates are still at 1968 levels. Young people are not learning English and. instead. they are being taught bilingualism that they learn in a different language and are segregated into linguistic groups. We should all abhor this present trend. Immigrant children are being condemned to economic secondclass citizenship by a wasteful Government program. Bilingualism is a 1960s phenomenon. Bilingualism and bilingual education have not been debated in this body for 25 years. So I ask you. my colleagues. to join me in this amendment. Let us do something for America. Let us do something for our immigrant children. Let us live our motto of one Nation. one people. We are all Americans. not hyphenated Americans.
Identified stereotypes
Generalization that bilingual education impedes immigrant children from assimilating into the American mainstream.