When we arrived in Wisconsin in 1975, my two children (10 & 8 at the time) were enrolled in normal classes in the local school. They got a modicum of extra english instruction but were otherwise mainstreamed. It was tough for them, but between the school and saturday morning cartoons they were at age appropriate language levels 6 months later.
Now they may have been geniuses (they are not) but they are now fully functional professionals (MD & physicist) and bilingual. Why deprive your children of most possibilities when they learn another language quite easily.
When we moved to New York state in 1978 the english teacher of my youngest, a clueless woman with an M.A. in english from a fairly well known ‘ivy’ was surprised how fast he could “translate an english question to his native tongue, find the answer, translate back to english and give her the answer.” I did not have the heart to tell her that he, like most others, did not think in one language and speak another at the same time. It did give me pause though to contemplate what she had been taught in college. Unfortunately my youngest (born in the US) and a teacher has enlightened me with the clap-trap passing for education in teacher colleges, which explained why we had to teach the hard stuff at home to give them a chance.
Of cause it is another thing if you want to keep them permanently down and dependent, which seems to be happening to large swats of inner city blacks and a lot of hispanics. The difference between the people from Puerto Rico and Cuba have been most illustrative.
Make your children free – teach them english so they can use it when they want – but keep their roots awake as well. Kids can handle both in spite of what their teachers think.
