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The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911 to further the teaching of English-language, literature, and composition-to native speakers of the language. Although World War I led the Council in 1917 to approve a resolution calling for "the rapid Americanization of all foreign elements by insisting upon instruction in the English language for all residents within the United States," only a few desultory and rather superficial journal articles during the next forty years evinced any further Council concern with the millions of American citizens and immigrants who were not native speakers of English.
After World War II even the influx of foreign students and America's involvement in English teaching abroad did not immediately turn the Council's attention to the resident speakers of other languages within the United States. In 1957 the Executive Committee did seek to interest the Elementary Section in studying the problem in elementary schools, but no action resulted.
In 1960, however, the preparation of the brochure The National Interest and the Teaching of English as a Second Language revealed such a dearth of actual data that a federal grant was subsequently sought and obtained for a national survey. Cosponsored and then published by the Council in 1966, the survey summary exposed a critical inadequacy of the schools with respect both to teachers and to teaching materials. Some responding school officials in both city and state departments of education refused even to admit the existence of the problem in their schools. There appeared little awareness that teaching English to speakers of other languages is a discipline requiring professional training and specialized textbooks.
Clearly, the situation called for focal, not marginal, attention. Already a stimulus provided by Council leadership had resulted in the holding of three inter-organizational conferences to consider the problems involved. But as ad hoc conferences, they lacked the power and influence of a permanent organization. Accordingly at the third conference, in 1966, there was adopted by the conferees a resolution leading to the creation of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
While the teaching of English to speakers of other languages was thus gaining recognition and respectability as an autonomous educational discipline, two related and significant developments occurred. One was the research-supported insistence (Andersson, 1977; Barik & Swain, 1978; Cummins, 1978; Currie & Currie, 1977; Genesee et al., 1978; Golub, 1978; Lambert, 1978; Lamont et al., 1978; Oller, 1978; Politzer & Ramirez, 1973; Rosier & Farella, 1976) that students with a language other than English should receive at least their initial content instruction in their own language. The second was a powerfully motivated movement that sought to provide, even while the study of English was beginning, a concomitant cultural component that would enable students to value their ethnic and linguistic identity in their own minority group. The first development fell within the area already identified as bilingual education; the second, within the area that soon came to be denominated bicultural education. In practice, they are not readily separated; indeed, in the view of the recently-formed National Association for Bilingual Education they are inseparable.
Legal recognition of certain rights and desires of resident minorities having linguistic and cultural identities yielded two important legal documents. The first was Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, enacted in 1968 and subsequently amended, authorizing and financing bilingual education programs. The second was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1974, Lau vs. Nichols, the import of which appears in the words of Associated Justice William Douglas: "Where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin-minority children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional programs to these students."
Although this decision for the first time established language rights as civil rights, it did not attempt to specify how they were to be obtained. Such specification was provided in 1975 by provisions that became known as the "Lau remedies," provisions applying specifically to programs authorized by Title VI. On August 5, 1980, the newly-established Department of Education announced that new regulations would replace the Lau remedies, regulations according to which all recipients of federal grants would have to comply with a four-stage procedure within the limits of a transitional framework. This proposal, however, was withdrawn by the Secretary of Education on February 2, 1981, with the explanation that the new rules would cost up to five billion dollars during the first five years of their operation. At the moment, the original Lau remedies remain in force.
The latitude implicit in the existing and continuing policies set by Titles VI and VII and by the Supreme Court decision has yielded a remarkably diverse crop of school programs, teacher-training curriculums, institutes and workshops, and books, reports, and pamphlets. Among them are reflected both in formed and uninformed viewpoints as well as controversial positions and hence contrasting approaches. Some direction, true, had been supplied by a statement from the Office of Bilingual Education in the U.S. Office of Education in 1975: "Bilingual education . . . recognizes the validity of learning in two languages and encourages educational programs leading to bilingualism. . . . It does suggest that instruction in English as a second language is a necessary part of the instruction, but is not sufficient to establish an educational program." This statement usefully points out an often blurred distinction between bilingual education and the teaching of English as a second language. The first is a program; the second is a discipline. One does not teach bilingual education but teaches something in a program of bilingual education. One does not teach in English as a second language, but one does teach English as a second language. This statement also implies rather sharply that the ultimate objective of a bilingual-bicultural program is to produce a balanced bilingual individual able to function effectively in the cultural environments of both the first and the second languages.
To what extent this objective is a practical objective has turned out to be controversial both on pedagogical grounds and on political grounds. So diverse have been the recent views and programs that in view of its permanent commitment to the teaching of English and its cultural setting, the National Council of Teachers of English finds it peculiarly appropriate and needful to enunciate its own position with respect to the requisite presence of English in a bilingual program.
Much of the existing diversity corresponds to the semantic complexity of the two key terms: bilingualism and bilingual education. Long interested in bilingualism, linguists have offered definitions ranging from that of Bloomfield, "native-like control of two languages" (1946:66), through Weinreich's "alternately using two languages" (1953: 1), to Haugen's producing ". . . complex and meaningful utterances in the other language" (1953:6). The complexity of the relationships between the degrees of bilingualism within the individual, and the extraordinary proliferation within expanding bilingual education has been noted by a number of writers (e.g., Mackey, 1970; and Cummins, 1979).
Although the federal effort was originally viewed as purely compensatory, a later official statement from the U.S. Office of Education defines bilingual education thus: the use of two languages, one of which is English, as mediums of instruction for the same pupil population in a well-organized program which encompasses all or part of the curriculum and includes the study of the history and culture associated with the mother tongue. A complete program develops and maintains the children's self-esteem and a legitimate pride in both cultures. (Conspicuous in this statement is the word maintain.)
In greater depth the relation between maintenance and transitional is analyzed by Mackey (1970). He suggests that bilingual education is a phenomenon with four broad dimensions, including (1) the language behavior of the bilingual at home, (2) the language(s) of the curriculum in the school, (3) the language characteristics of the local community, and, (4) the status of the languages themselves. The varying linguistic and social factors within each of these dimensions have implications for the issues raised in implementing bilingual education programs in the schools. Of special relevance to educators is Mackey's second category, concerning, as it does, the patterns of language use in the school curriculums. In this category the curriculum and the language of instruction may vary along several dimensions:
1. The medium of instruction may be one language, two languages, or more.
2. The pattern of language development may be one of maintenance of two languages, or transition from one medium of instruction to another.
3. The distribution of the languages in the curriculum will vary with regard to both time and the subjects taught through the language and also with regard to the optimal use of each language in serving students as they seek personal development.
These curriculum dimensions exist, of course, with such other factors as the degree of prestige held by the minority group language in the community and the extent to which that language is used by all generations within the home. These considerations actually allow for what Mackey has meticulously distinguished as some 250 integrated types of bilingual education.
This wide range of options has given rise to a number of controversial issues. Perhaps the most widely-discussed controversy is that about the relative merits of what have been termed transitional and maintenance bilingual education programs. Some have sought to replace these terms by "subtractive" and "additive" in order to emphasize the final results of the programs and others have sought to reduce the distinction. The terms, however, are still widely used and are retained here for ease of reference. The controversy itself has serious political overtones, but the essential contrast is simply that a transitional program aims at rapidly moving the limited-English-proficiency student into the mainstream from a bilingual education program, while the maintenance program provides continued support for the student's first language and cultural milieu even after English control has been gained.
But within this apparently simple contrast, as Cummins (1979) indicates, lies great diversity in terms of motivational, cognitive, and linguistic characteristics. It is impossible, he declares, to avoid questions such as the following in any attempts to explore the value of different forms of bilingual education: What level of second language competence (i.e., in English) must the child possess at various grade levels in order to gain the highest benefit from content instruction in English? To what extent is a bilingual child with fluent surface skills in both his first language and in English also able to carry out complex cognitive operations (e.g., verbal analogies, reading comprehension, explaining mathematical problems) through both languages? Do children who maintain and develop their native language competence in school develop higher or lower levels of English skills than do those whose first language is replaced by English? Cummins believes that, until research has found answers to such questions, definitive statements about the effectiveness of various patterns of bilingual instruction will be difficult to make.
Yet regardless of what specific changes or different emphases in bilingual education the future answers to such questions may bring, the case for bilingual education is cogent and powerful. In any program of bilingual education in the United States, English as a medium of instruction and as a basic discipline embracing language, composition, and literature will always be an essential component. Because the teaching of English is the very reason for its existence, the National Council of Teachers of English-without consideration of pedagogical issues to be resolved by future research-now considers it useful to follow the example of its associated organization, TESOL, by offering this position paper.
In its own position paper in 1976 TESOL affirmed continued support of bilingual education in its policy, programs, and publications. TESOL, that paper declares, "recognizes the pedagogical soundness and viability of bilingual education as an educational process." It is this process, the paper continues, "whereby the linguistic and cultural resources the student brings to the school are used as tools for learning in the content areas while at the same time the students acquire proficiency needed in English to enable them to use it as a learning tool." With this statement the Council finds itself in complete accord.
The TESOL paper takes a stand respecting the controversial extremes of transitional and maintenance programs: "The transitional program provides instruction in and through the student's dominant language only until the student has acquired sufficient proficiency in English to enable him to function effectively in a monolingual setting. The maintenance bilingual program establishes the development of two languages throughout the educational process and sets functional bilingualism and biculturalism as an important educational goal. The two languages are used as tools for acquiring knowledge and conceptualizing throughout the student's education.... TESOL supports and promotes the concept that local communities, especially the parents of the children in the system, have the right to participate in policy decisions concerning the type of instructional program best suited for their children." With this statement of TESOL the Council also finds itself in agreement.
The Council must amplify this concurrence, however, by emphasizing that the bi- of bilingual and bicultural is never to be interpreted as referring to two separate linguistic and cultural communities as in Canada and Belgium. The replacement of the myth of the melting pot by the concept of a multilingual and multicultural society must refer to the enriching bilingualism and biculturalism of the individual and not to the development of linguistic and cultural enclaves. Nor does NCTE believe that this concept refers only to speakers of languages other than English. The Council strongly supports the principle of a bilingual program in which the English-speaking students are given similar opportunity to learn a second language and culture, particularly one in the community. Bilingual education should be a two-way street.
But the National Council of Teachers of English emphasizes the continuity of English as the national language of the United States. The preservation of a student's first language if other than English, and of a possibly differing local culture, is to be construed as a base to which the student adds control of English and some familiarity with its literature and the culture within which the literature developed.
Christina Bratt Paulston, 1977 president of TESOL and herself a second-language speaker of English, vigorously strengthens this point: "Beyond a superficial level, culture learning entails firsthand exposure to members of the (second culture), and it follows, however unpalatable some may find this statement, that children must have access to Anglo (i.e., native English-speaking) teachers, if they are to learn the rules of mainstream culture. It will be the students' choice what aspects, if any, of mainstream culture they care to incorporate into their bicultural makeup, and no school or curriculum can dictate that choice. But to deny them the opportunity of choice I find reprehensible."
Just as students have a choice, so schools have a choice based upon the number or percentage of students with a first language other than English, the number of language groups, the qualifications of teachers, and the resources of the district and its individual schools. In a New Mexico community, for example, where nine out of ten residents have a variety of Spanish as their first language, school parents may well opt for a maintenance program. In a Minnesota community where there are only half a dozen Hmong refugees scattered in several grades, even a transitional program may be so impractical that the system must resort to tutorial procedures. Between these extremes lies the multitude of variations calling for local adaptations in which the parents should have a voice.
Most of the range between these extremes is properly within the province of TESOL, which has outlined the kind of cooperation required between the professionally trained teacher of English as a second language and the bilingual teacher. Although as yet not all ESL teachers in bilingual programs have had even a minimally desirable professional training, TESOL has established guidelines for their preparation, and many academic institutions have certificate and degree programs in accord with those guidelines. Already several states have adopted equally strong certification requirements in addition to those for regular certification for teaching in elementary or secondary schools. The Council supports TESOL's insistence that teaching English is a special academic discipline requiring professional preparation, and that teachers employed to teach English in bilingual education programs must have that preparation.
This preparation has been outlined in the TESOL guidelines and need not be repeated here. A professional thus prepared for teaching in the United States will then be not only competent in linguistic knowledge and language pedagogy but also ready to take advantage of the fact that limited-English-proficiency students will necessarily experience outside of school at least some reinforcement of English skills through the mass media and social activities and through interaction with English-speaking peers. In a bilingual program the ESL professional is desirably bilingual, capable of working with the students in both of the relevant languages. If not, then the professional must be ready to share responsibility in team teaching or in some other cooperative arrangement.
Because at present the supply of professionally trained teachers is less than the demand for them, a temporary expedient is to provide available bilingual teachers with as much training as possible through workshops, inservice guidance by consultants, and special publications. Such persons, categorized as facilitators of English acquisition, can do much to meet the needs of students in the process of adding second language skills to their language repertoire.
But part of the range between the extremes, as is already clear, must be accepted by the Council as within its immediate concern. Here it must accept full responsibility. There are and there will be for the indefinite future elementary and secondary teachers of language arts and of English who are not prepared as ESL teachers, who are reluctant to think of themselves as ESL teachers, who are quite unlikely to be reached through TESOL conventions or publications, and who nevertheless find in their classrooms two or three or four students unskilled in English and having different cultural backgrounds. These students may have come from a transitional program or, more critically, may have just entered-without any previous English experience-a school system quite unprepared to deal with this new situation. Such students need from their regular English teacher attention different from and beyond that given their classmates.
The Council has taken a first step in accepting this responsibility by copublishing a TRIP book (Theory and Research Into Practice) with ERIC/RCS entitled Mainstreaming the Non-English Speaking Student by Raymond J. Rodrigues and Robert H. White. The book offers some help to teachers facing this challenge by suggesting both what to do and what not to do as they seek to provide some measure of productive instruction. More help will be needed as this lead is followed. It is indefensible, for example, not to point out to such teachers that they are not to dwell on such low priority matters as the difference between a and an when a student has not yet learned that in English the adjective precedes the noun or that third person singular pronouns manifest gender distinction. It is indefensible not to help them see that for these students they are not to spend precious time identifying the parts of speech or the vestigial remains of the English subjunctive.
But it is important to point out to them that it is praiseworthy for these students to express original thoughts without overmuch concern with erratic idiom and orthographic freedom. It is important for them to recognize that the student learning English already commands a language that can advantageously be used to help the native English speakers grasp the nature of language, the concept of underlying common structures, and the relation of linguistic symbol to its referent. For example, the indirect object concept is expressed in English by the function word to or by a pre-object position. How does the student's own language express it? Such a student may still live, at least in some measure, in a different culture as well. If so, that too may be used for appreciative comparison, without denigration, for the benefit of all students. How, for instance, is gratitude expressed? By an equivalent of Thank you, or by a gesture, or not at all? What is the social significance of the response, or of its absence?
The appearance of this publication, then, is only one step on the road, only the first realized opportunity to be of aid to non-ESL teachers of English in such a situation. Other opportunities must be grasped.
In fine, the National Council of Teachers of English supports the objectives of bilingual and bicultural education with a basic component of the English language and its culture. It insists that teachers of English in bilingual education programs have professional preparation, if not certification, in the ESL field. It believes that general teachers of English should cooperate in every way possible with colleagues in bilingual education programs. It encourages English teachers with only a few non-English-speaking students to become familiar with bilingual education aims and methods and especially to draw upon ESL professional literature for help in meeting the needs of those students. It assumes the responsibility, on both the national and the affiliate levels, of working with other organizations involved with bilingual education and especially with teaching English to speakers of other languages. It believes that there must be continual monitoring and assessment of the productive role of English in bilingual education as a means of increasing the quality of that role. The Council takes this position as testimony of its support of the rights of students with limited English proficiency to receive equal educational opportunity.
Andersson, Theodore. "Preschool Biliteracy." Hispania 60 (1977): 527-530.
Barik, Henri C., and Swain, Merrill. "Evaluation of a Bilingual Education Program in Canada: The Elgin Study through Grade Six." Bulletin of the CILA 27 (1978): 32-58.
Bloomfield, Leonard. Language. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1944.
Cummins, James. "Educational Implications of Mother Tongue Maintenance in Minority Language Groups." Canadian Modern Language Review 34 (Feb. 1978): 395-416.
Cummins, James. "Linguistic Interdependence and the Educational Development of Bilingual Children." Review of Educational Research 49 (1979): 2.
Currie, Eva Garcia Carillo, and Currie, Haver C. "An Area Providing a Severe Test of Linguistic Hypotheses and the Application of Linguistic Facts." Sociolinguistic Newsletter 8 (summer 1977): 8.214-215.
Genesee, Fred; Tucker, G. R.; and Lambert, Wallace E. "An Experiment in Trilingual Education." Canadian Modern Language Review 34 (1978): 621-643.
Golub, Lester. "Evaluation Design and Implementation of a Bilingual Education Program, Grades 1-12, Spanish/English." Education and Urban Society 10 (1978): 363-384.
Haugen, Einar. The Norwegian Language in America: Study in Bilingual Behavior. 2 vols. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953.
Lambert, Wallace E. "Cognitive and Sociocultural Consequences of Bilingualism." Canadian Modern Language Review 34 (1978): 537-547.
Lambert, Wallace E. "Some Cognitive and Sociocultural Consequences of Being Bilingual." Georgetown Roundtable on Language and Linguistics (1978): 214-224.
Lamont, D.; Penner, W.; et al. "Evaluation of the Second Year of a Bilingual Program." Canadian Modern Language Review 34 (1978): 175-185.
Mackey, William F. "A Typology of Bilingual Education." Foreign Language Annals 3 (May, 1970): 3.
Oller, John W., Jr. "The Language Factor in the Evaluation of Bilingual Education." Georgetown Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (1978): 410-422.
Politzer, Robert L., and Ramirez, Arnulfo G. "An Error Analysis of the Spoken English of Mexican-American Pupils in a Bilingual School and a Monolingual School." Language Learning 23 (1973): 39-61.
Rosier, Paul, and Farella, Merilyn. "Bilingual Education at Rock Point-Some Early Results." TESOL Quarterly 10 (1976): 379-388.
Weinreich, Uriel. Languages in Contact. Mouton, 1953.
Participating in the formation or criticism of this document are the following:
Committee members: Penelope M. Alatis; Harold B. Allen, chair; Gina P. Harvey; Richard L. Light; Maybelle Marckwardt; Adele Hansen Martinez; James W. Ney; and Ray Past
Consultants: For the International Reading Association--Migdalia Romero De Ortiz; For the Association for Bilingual Education--Ramon L. Santiago; For Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages--Betty W. Robinett and Linda Schinke
This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated
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