should Bilingual education program be offered to immigrant children throughout the United States?

There are immigrants from countries that do not speak Spanish or English. Which languages would you have them educated in? Swahili and French?

If you are talking about the way the Spanish-English biligual programs in this country, then it is NO NO NO. In many states this has turned out to be a huge waste of federal money and man power. Countless children who already speak Spanish all the time at home still get the crutch to keep speaking Spanish in school and studies show that many never got out of it.

What I don't understand is that the U.S government requires each and every foreign students who comes here to study to have certain efficiency in English, and we all had to study on our own/pay for all the classes to get the good score that we needed. But when it comes to these people from Mexico who didn't even bother following the immigration laws, the U.S. government just hands everything to them, oh, your kids don't want to speak English, we will give them bilingual classes, oh, they can't pass the tests, we will lower the standards....

It's either for multiple languages( Japanese, German, Farsi, Swahili, Chinese, Korean, etc....) or nothing at all.

Also, from my own experience, I had a young girl from Russia who spoke about 20 words of English when she visited the school(we didn't have any bilingual language program). She was assigned to my class, learned English faster than we could blink, stayed on top of the class all the way through.

My sister had to bring her kids to the U.S for a year because of her husband's exchange program at an university. Her youngest had to learn English with other kids from foreign countries(that means they don't get to talk in the own languages) and she learned so much and so well.

Riot preventing girl:

OF COARSE?!

my my my....

No. If the children are living in the United States they need to be able to effectively communicate with the world around them. I think they should model it around the way they do international student when they come to college. They should take a TOEFL type exam for kids and based upon they scores they can either go into the regular classroom or spend a half a semester to year learning English. There is so much that need to be done in our public school for children who parents are citizens and are paying taxes. I don't think the financial burden should be placed on the the school district to promote a bilingual education. Another solution would be to establish some type of bilingual charter school.

1. Yes 2. Yes I've lived in 2 states with a lot of illegals, Texas and California, and from what I understand the parents think that having a kid here will keep them (the parent) in the US. Lately the government has been deporting the parents even if they do have kids here. At least they have been in California I don't know about the rest of the US.

No. As of early 2007, there are 6,912 known living human languages. The present system of teaching only in Spanish as a second language is racist, immoral and illegal at best! If we want to be fair every school system should have someone who can speak each of the 6,912 languages! Of course that would bankrupt the education system! The only fair and equatable method is to teach in English! If someone wants to learn another language there are Chinese schools (my nephew is attending one now), Greek schools, etc. that meet when regular school is out of session. If they can not speak English they better learn and the best tool is immersion learning. You don't get that teaching in a foreign language! If we got rid of illegal alien children we would have less problems with this and save a lot more money! Why is it that most people who speak other languages can and do learn English along with their children. But Spanish speaking people can not seem to do so and require special classes for their children?

No. The education program should be exclusively in English, but there should be a push to teach foreign languages. If the system continues to coddle those who do/will not learn English, those people will continue to miss out on opportunities, and may end up becoming leeches.

There should, however, be strong funding of programs to teach English to legal immigrants.

I think they should learn English. And it should be mandated, not suggested or offered.

I feel like I need to learn Spanish and Vietnamese just to survive my weekly grocery shopping excursion. In Canada, new citizens need to learn French. Makes perfect sense to me. It's their country, their language. But here we can't do that. Someone's feelings wil get hurt. Someone will yell discrimination and sue. It made far better sense to leaders have our elementary school children learn Spanish instead.

Now watch, someone will interpret that as racism, which couldn't be farther from the truth. But sure as I'm typing this it'll happen. Doesn't matter to me though, I don't do the eggshell thing.

bilingual ed was offered years ago. It did not work. The teachers were using very little english so the children were not progressing in english.

Az was court ordered to spend $40 million to provide english language classes to spanish speaking students. It is not cheap, nor it is right to force tax payers to teach them our language. that is something their parents should provide, but they want the child to know spanish and will leave it up to the school system to teach them english.

It is the law.... it is the LAW.

Immigrants will be able to speak and deal with English before they come to the United States.

It is also the law that if you aid and abet an illegal alien, you have committed a felony. I would ask this member if they know of illegal aliens in our country that they should report?

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Yes, if this makes our kids more competitive in the global economy. I would send my kid to a English/Chinese school if I could.

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Our kids are not in a global economy. Our kids are in schools with the children of illegal aliens who should be in Mexico. Our Congress is criminal in this mess, and abridging every law they can to bring the illegal aliens in without following law.. but that will end.

And above all other things, the children in our schools need to leave school knowing English and well. Bi-lingual education programs very decided destroy that ability and should be removed.

No, and as mentioned above, immersion in a language is the best method of teaching.

It is exorbitantly expensive for schools to provide classes in 2 languages. Schools have cut foreign language classes for American children in high schools in order to fund ESL except those mandated by law. French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese classes were offered where my children attended school. They have cut out all but Spanish classes, citing they did not have the funds to provide ESL and remedial classes for non-English speakers. Those ESL classes and remedial classes are attended by Spanish-speakers, but the children of a Korean family who legally immigrated here were not provided ESL.

Neither were the Russian children who immigrated here.

They are all fully fluent in English now, and excelling in school.