Remington Landis
Historical Foundations
"The United States is now, always has been, and will continue to be a multilingual and multicultural country" (Wright, 2015).
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Educators who work with ELL’s need to understand the history, current language, education policies and legislation that affect their students and classrooms (Wright, 2015). The idea of bilingual education has been around for a very long time. Although, the first time it was put into action in our country was in the year 1968, with the passage of the federal Bilingual Education Act. Over the course of time, several legal cases have shaped our educational policies around teaching emergent bilinguals. The following cases have had prominent impact on emergent bilinguals:
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Cases: Information and Impact:
Civil Rights Act of 1964 From 1945-1957, a civil rights bill was proposed by Congress and failed every year. Limited bills were passed in 1957 and 1960 with few meaningful changes. Kennedy began to publicly urge for a bill in 1963. This case played important role in paving way for support of E.B’s.
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Lau Remedies 1965 After the Lau V Nichols case ruled EB students deserve equitable education that fit their language needs, there was much confusion in schools over how to accomplish that. Lau Remedies sought to remedy this confusion. It enacted the creation of E.S.L and bilingual education programs
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Plyler vs. Doe 1982 In June 1982, the Plyler v. Doe, case announced a decision informing states that they cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status. Problems of the case are that people easily confuse proving residency with immigration status. The result was that immigration documents are unrequested and irrelevant to enter a school.
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Of course there are many other legal cases not mentioned above that have effected bilingual education in our country. As an educator I can only hope for the best in our countries educational future and try to ensure meaning and fair teaching practices.
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References:
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: research, theory, policy, and practice (Second ed.). Philadelphia: Caslon Publishing.
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Images retrieved from:
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