Riley said dual language instruction has proven to help Hispanic children do better academically as well as preserve children's heritage and promote bilingualism that can help students in an increasingly global economy. Secretary Riley is correct. Bilingual education should not be controversial. Every single American who puts the welfare of poor kids ahead of their own personal career and political interests should abominate it. After bilingual education's three decades of catastrophic failure, the national political elite can only respond by pouring more fuel on the fire.
Bilingual education is a fraud perpetrated against Hispanic youngsters.
Its secret goal is to delay the immigrant student's switchover to English until he's past puberty. As demonstrated by MIT's Steven Pinker, the leading expert on language and the brain, before age 13 a child's mind possesses a remarkable ability to learn new languages. He can absorb new vocabularies, grammars, and accents simply through osmosis as long as he's immersed in the language. But at puberty, the mind's language-learning faculty grows rigid, and the hope of ever losing a foreign accent fades out. Spanish-speaking teachers, obviously, since they are paid a premium for their destructive talent.