california, here we go—again

On June 2, 1998, by an overwhelming voteof 61% to 39%, California’s voters passedProposition 227. Beginning in the 1998-1999school year, this legislation mandated that pub-lic schools provide instruction only in English(thus repudiating bilingual education) and, fur-ther, that they have only 1 year to prepare stu-dents to enter mainstream English classes. Voxpopuli had spoken, and those who teach ESOLin California were left to implement a lan-guage-in-education policy with which manydisagreed and felt was of questionable educa-tional value. Is the Proposition 227 debacle justone of those election quirks that periodicallyoccur in the State of California or are therelessons to be learned that affect all of us inESOL?

California is the largest state in the UnitedStates and a bellwether for emerging social pol-icy trends. Often, initiatives and movementsthat begin in that state radiate throughout theentire nation. The resurgence of the English-only movement began in California andspawned laws, referenda, and proclamations inother parts of the country, as well as efforts todeny immigrants, both legal and illegal, theirbasic rights, such as educational and medicalservices. It is, therefore, not surprising that thepassage of Proposition 227 has generatedantibilingual education sentiments, pronounce-ments, and legislation nationwide at the stateand local levels. One such bill, cynically namedThe English Fluency Act (H.R. 3892), wasintroduced in the U.S. House of Representativesto limit bilingual education programs. This billpassed the House by a vote of 221 to 189, with24 abstentions. As of this writing, the U.S.Senate has yet to vote on this bill.

The Proposition 227 episode in Californiarevealed another trend in language policy in theUnited States: The public is largely uninformedabout the realities of education and is influ-enced more by rhetoric than by empirical data.Most of those who wrote or spoke in support ofProposition 227, either within California orelsewhere in the country, did not produce anyevidence showing that bilingual education wasineffective, that children were not learningEnglish, or that children learning ESL couldmaster sufficient academic English within ayear to compete successfully with English-dominant children. When opponents of 227argued that the proposal was unsound educa-tionally, their views were largely ignored by thegeneral public. Voters seemed to hold the view

that the United States is a monolingual countryand that all immigrants should abandon theirnative languages immediately in favor ofEnglish. The fact that bilingual education hasalways been used as a transitional program toease nonnative speakers into English-dominantclassrooms (and not a program of languagemaintenance) and that data indicate that lan-guages other than English are eroding in favorof English is unimportant. If students who arenot proficient in English become casualties ofthe school system, that is simply the price to bepaid for their not learning enough English.English-only in the classrooms and let immi-grants be damned!

Three lessons emerge from this experiencein California. The first is that all of us need topay close attention to language legislation, notonly in our immediate geographic vicinities, butthroughout the country and the world. Ideas thatbegin in one place quickly spread to others.Second, language legislation is rarely about lan-guage alone. It is also about those who speakthe languages. If groups are perceived to bethreatening, disloyal, or alien, policies are pro-posed and enacted against them. It is the groupsthemselves who are targets for repression, withthe difference in language used as camouflage.We, in ESOL, must learn to dissect legislationto expose the hidden agendas behind laws.Further, we must look at how all legislationaffects our students’ lives, even if it is not cate-gorized as a language piece per se, becauseboth language and nonlanguage bills becomepublic policies, which then have social ramifi-cations. Finally, those of us in ESOL must do abetter job of communicating to the general pub-lic the issues in second language learning andteaching and sound educational strategies. Thisis an ongoing task, one that must occupy ourconstant attention. If we wait until a specificlegislative proposal emerges to take action, werun the risk of losing the battle and putting ourstudents at the mercy of an uninformed publicled by those who capitalize on ignorance to fur-ther their own personal agendas.

AuthorElliot L. Judd is director of the MA TESOL

program at the University of Il l inois atChicago, in the United States. He was the firsteditor of TESOL Journal, from autumn 1991 tosummer 1995. One of his research interests islanguage-in-education policy in the UnitedStates.

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California, Here We Go—AgainElliot L. Judd