Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education

by Rosalie Porter

Today children who are not fluent in English―legal and illegal immigrants, refugees, and native born―are the fastest growing portion of our population, accounting for more than half the children in classrooms in many city schools. Bilingual education programs established by federal and state laws have required that such students be taught basic subjects in their native languages rather than in English. Judged by most applicable measures―such as achievement scores and dropout rates―these programs have not been successful. This edition includes new material on recent efforts to reform bilingual education, on the growing trend across the country toward English language programs, on the latest national research studies, and on the movement to make English the official language of the United States. Forked Tongue is a devastating inside account of how the twenty-eight-year experiment in bilingual education has failed our language-minority children―and why. Rosalie Porter draws on local, state, and international experience to provide us with the first authoritative account of which policies, programs, and practices actually succeed with the children they are intended to serve. Forked Tongue will be of interest to educators, sociologists, and scholars interested in second language acquisition.

378 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Kathleen (itpdx) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The state that I live in has an initiative measure on the ballot this November that prohibits teaching public school students in a language other that English for more than two years. I went to a forum that had a presentation on the measure and the proponent suggested that voters read this book because it "proves that English immersion works". I would be interested in knowing if he has read the book. The author does present strong evidence that the immersion method of teaching a second language (particularly to young children) is quite effective. But all through the book, she advocates that schools be allowed to choose the most effective methods for teaching their students and not have to fight a state bureaucracy to use whatever methods work.
The first part of the book was written in the late 80's and has an extensive epilogue that was written in '99. Mostly what she is opposed to is maintenance bi-lingual education where children are segregated and taught extensively for many years in their native language and are not taught enough English to be main-streamed.
The book has interesting material but is obviously dated and a bit of a slog because the author writes defensively.