Cultural diversity has become the enemy within, far more potent and insidious in its threat than any external enemy. Linguistic pluralism would make sense for us only on the questionable assumption that our civil peace and national effectiveness could survive multilingualism. But, in fact, multilingualism enormously increases cultural fragmentation, civil antagonism, illiteracy, and economic-technological ineffectualness. Testimony is mixed, but indications are that bilingual education retards rather than expedites the movement of Hispanic children into the English-speaking world and that it promotes segregation rather than it does integration. Bilingualism shuts doors.
Monolingual education opens doors to the larger world.
Schlesinger's comments become interpretable only in the context of a societal discourse that is profoundly disquieted by the fact that the sounds of the Other have now become audible and the hues of the American social landscape have darkened noticeably. The amendment, which is supported by some Democrats otherwise skeptical of S. 356, would shield programs funded under the Bilingual Education Act and the Native American Languages Act from the bill's restrictions. It would do nothing, however, to safeguard other rights and services now available to limited-English speakers, including bilingual voting. A broad coalition of educators, civil libertarians, and minority rights advocates has argued that S. 356 'cannot be fixed' to eliminate its ethnically divisive and discriminatory impact.