Various studies have indicated that learning a second language has lifelong benefits.
For schoolchildren, it has been shown to improve overall academic performance, attention span and engagement while enhancing empathy. For adults, it can be a powerful tool in the marketplace. For older adults, it can reduce the chances of dementia and cognitive decline.
As one professor in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education told NPR: “Bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime.”
Now, state superintendent Chris Reykdal would like to expand dual-language programs in Washington’s public schools, establishing them in every district by 2040. Reykdal last week announced a proposal to have students learn content in English and a “partner language,” with the goal of building biliteracy and bilingualism.
“The evidence is clear,” Reykdal said. “When young people become bilingual during the early grades, they have more cognitive flexibility and they perform better in school. As our global economy changes and our world becomes increasingly international, dual-language education must become a core opportunity for our students.”
Currently, 42 district and state-tribal schools offer dual-language programs that involve approximately 35,000 students.
One such program can be found at Columbia Elementary School in the Woodland district. There, roughly half the students split their day between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking classes. The (Longview) Daily News reports: “The hallways have bilingual posters so students can practice reading both languages, and some teachers are encouraged to exclusively speak Spanish with students.”
Reykdal’s proposal is bold and innovative. And it represents a cultural shift over the past 25 years.
In 1998, for example, California voters passed Proposition 227 with 61 percent of the vote. The measure restricted bilingual education and required students with limited English proficiency to be instructed in an intense one-year language program. By 2016, 74 percent of voters in the state opted to overturn that law, authorizing school districts to establish dual–language immersion programs for both native and non–native English speakers.
Reykdal’s proposal undoubtedly will land in the middle of current culture wars, touching upon the hot-button issues of immigration and public education. As advocacy group ProEnglish writes: “Our nation’s public schools have the clear responsibility to help students who don’t know English to learn that language as quickly as possible. To do otherwise is to sentence the child to a lifetime of political and economic isolation.”
We suggest the opposite is true. With the global economy and global communication becoming intertwined, bilingual education is essential for this nation to avoid economic isolation. While new Americans should, indeed, learn English in order to assimilate, it is equally important for native English speakers to learn another language in order to engage in the economy of the future.
Critics will argue that dual-language programs are emblematic of a diminishing American culture. But such claims deny the reality of a changing world. Being bilingual can pave a path to the rest of the world for American students.
The benefits and the drawbacks to dual-language education — and the costs of implementing the program — should be robustly debated in the Legislature next year. The idea of young students developing bilingual skills is worth exploring.
