This article illuminates the rising awareness with regards to dual language instruction programs in Chicago. It highlights the positive aspects of adapting such an instruction medium and also describes the restraints on adapting dual language programs. Moreover, the article aims to fight the case for adapting dual language programs within Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The article provides compelling reasons to incorporate dual language programs and cites credible authorities to back its argument.
The changing requirements of the corporate world require schools and colleges to update their curriculums to provide the skills that are needed by business firms. “Chicago companies competing in the global market are desperate for well-educated employees with fluency in more than one language” (Dual Language Programs: The New Face of Bilingual Education). This indicates that there is a demand for people possessing bilingual skills in Chicago’s job market. It is therefore, the duty of Chicago’s schools to provide their students such as skill set. To do this schools need to encourage a students’ literacy in their native language as well as English. (Dual Language Programs: The New Face of Bilingual Education). Experience survey conducted establishes that dual language programs help to develop student’s reasoning abilities that can aid them in future learning. As it makes students explore the levels of their analytical language abilities, that they are unable to discover in single native language instruction programs. (Dual Language Programs: The New Face of Bilingual Education). Teachers “want to build on what they bring to us, not take away” (Dual Language Programs: The New Face of Bilingual Education).
However, the program faces stiff challenges such as shortages of bilingual teachers, non-compliance of parents, nationalism issues and competition from schools that offer English only programs. The number of teachers who can provide bilingual instruction are scarce and “the student to teacher ratio is already 31 to 1” (Dual Language Programs: The New Face of Bilingual Education). This also gives rise to the problem of legal compliance, wherein, the State law requires bilingual class sizes to be ten percent less than the average class size. Also, parents are unwilling to let their children stray from English only medium as it does not fulfill their perceptions of the American dream. Other constraints towards adapting a district level dual language program, includes and is not restricted to logistics problems, as well as stereotypes against other languages. Another major problem that exists is that many students coming in from poorer family have little or no language skills in their native language. It augments the problem of dual language instruction, provided that the student possesses few literacy skills to build upon.
Nonetheless, implementation of the program is quite possible provided that sincere efforts be made to implement it. The benefits of equipping students with bilingual skills are many and the most important being, the future employability of these students. For this purpose State policies would have to be relaxed in Chicago district, newer assessment procedures will have to be developed and curriculum changes will have to be made. Problems such as lack of staff have not been proven to significantly impact the functioning of such a program. Once a system is in place, parents awareness with regards to the benefits of these programs can be created and the logistics problems can also be sorted out.
References
Karp , Sarah. “Dual-Language Programs:The New Face of Bilingual Education”.