I grew up with and the tools I maximally related to. Maintenance bilingual programs have died nationally since that time. They dared validate the eventual existence of a fully functioning bilingual American adult. These labels negate the inherent linguistic and cultural strengths of who I was and still am. Going away to college and negotiating my first job, indirect products of the Title VII legislation, allowed me to empower myself without betraying my Latin-ness in the process.
Bilingual education means much more than simply teaching a student how to function in two languages.
It means encouraging a student to fully develop via the cultural richness of two realities, of using linguistic systems to challenge boundaries, of defining your American-ness biculturally. Title VII provided a structural backdrop and philosophical validation of my identity, and the identity of each child I taught. During my first year of college, I met a young, thin international student from Bombay. He too was far from home, on a scholarship, and wondered how he fit into the universe around him. I thought I knew broadened, softened, and merged with unknown experiences and pressures common to his world.