Bilingual Programs Quotes

One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved? There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious. Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted. In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart. But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three? In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination. And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?

In my opinion, dual language education is a great public good that ought to be developed everywhere, as it can positively transform a child, a family, a school, a community, and even a country. It is with this belief and with the conviction that parents can make a difference that I share this book in the hope that more bilingual programs will sprout in schools around the world.

Bilingual speakers constantly select some features from their linguistic repertoire and inhibit others, relying on what psycholinguists call the executive function of the brain. Bialystok and her colleagues, who study how bilingualism affects the mind and brain, have used behavioral and neuroimaging methods to show that bilinguals, because of their constant use of two languages, perform better on executive control tasks than do monolinguals (Barac & Bialystok, 2012; Bialystok, 2011, 2015, 2016; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013).

It has been found that bilinguals’ constant use of their different language practices strengthens the control mechanisms of the brain (the inhibitory control) and changes the associated brain regions

Bilingual practices have been shown to strengthen certain cognitive mechanisms, which in turn may increase one’s creative potential.

Page 12: The Bilingual Education Act expanded the idea of students’ right to their own language to their right to be educated in their own language, if their command of English was insufficient for them to learn on a par with native English-speaking students in classrooms where only English was spoken. While obviously conceived as a transition to an English program, in effect, bilingual education also strengthens students’ abilities to communicate in their own language, if that is the language in which it has been determined that they can learn more effectively. The social significance of this development, however unintentional, is that public schools—perhaps for the first time on a national scale—have become actively engaged in maintaining the native language of ethnic minority groups.

Quoting page 85: The OCR [Office for Civil Rights] in the early 1970s in effect experienced an internal capture shift. The black agenda activists who had dominated the office between 1965 and 1970 were joined and to some extend displaced by a new cadre of Latino activists. Not content with the transitional model of bilingual education, which used native-language instruction as a bridge to English language proficiency, the Latino nationalists called for Spanish-based cultural maintenance programs of indefinite duration. La Raza Unida’s 1967 founding statement captured the Chicano spirit of cultural nationalism and linguistic ethnocentrism: “The time of subjugation, exploitation, and abuse of human rights of La Raza in the United States is hereby ended forever,” the manifesto proclaimed. “[We] affirm the magnificence of La Raza, the greatness of our heritage, our history, our language, our traditions, our contributions to humanity and culture.

Quoting Page 87: In 1978 a four-year study by the American Institutes for Research, sponsored by the USOE [U.S. Office of Education], concluded that most of the Hispanic students involved [in bilingual/bicultural programs[ were native speakers of English, that those who needed to learn English competence were not in fact acquiring it, that most bilingual programs were aimed at linguistic and cultural maintenance rather than learning English, and that the segregated Hispanic students who were already alienated from school simply remained so.