The selection of language is vitally crucial not only in social communication skills, but also in the academic education. As Hatuka and Snow implicated, “Language is not a unitary skill, but a complex configuration of abilities”. So, as far as education is concerned, the tool of teaching demands the utilization of comprehensive language in order to cope with the diverse cultures in this world of globalization.
The mode of bilingual education has been introduced in the US so as to facilitate the foreigner students in the various aspects of the learning. This bilingual education includes English and other minority languages. The ratios and course of these languages are defined in the program models, which are followed accordingly. The major models of bilingual education are transitional bilingual education, dual language bilingual education and developmental bilingual education. In the transitional bilingual education models, teaching is conducted for three years in the native language of the children so as to prepare them for the current norm by facilitating them through evolutionary stages of language learning, especially in the context of English acquisition.
As far as dual language bilingual education is concerned, such models have been devised to give natives and foreigners the potential edge of being proficient in both the languages. In the US, these program models usually include the equal percentage of native English speakers and non-native language speakers. On the other hand, these models are not so much pragmatic in the US schools. Two tools of dual bilingual education have been reported more effective, which include the teaching of academic students through second language by the professional bilingual educators and improvisation of students’ skills through writing in the native language. In the developmental bilingual education, the children are taught in the native language as well as in the language of English for a longer period to induce bilingualism in them.
In the third edition of his book ‘Choosing Democracy’, Campbell has also discussed the current cultural issues in education. He believes that the implementation of multicultural education is quite mandatory for achieving absolute democracy. It has also been claimed that the people without such education cause economic and political sabotage. So, Campbell has also produced many suggestions for the campaign of bilingual education in the US schools as well as for the improvement of teachers’ skills.
The major advantages of the bilingual education have encouraged its practicing. One of these advantages is that the bilingual education enhances communication skills between the natives and the foreigners. The other advantages of the bilingual education include the motivation among the target language learners and the academic learning of the native speakers with the proficient acquisition of the bilingual language knowledge.
On the contrary, the critics have also indicated much negative points in the system of bilingual education. According to the critics, the bilingual education has been proved as a serious threat for national identity due to harmonization of native language with the non-native language. Other obligations to the bilingual education belong to racial and ethnic biases, because it has been claimed that the implementation of bilingual education may cause harm seriously to community segregation. Besides this, the retention in the child growth phase has also been shown associated with this system.
After since 1968 historical amendments of the legislation in the context of bilingual education, it has been currently rephrased to enhance the opportunities for the language minority students and it has been refereed as the United States Bilingual Education Act 1994. Its first section covers the issues of multiculturalism and the second section contains the federal legislation in which the methodology for practicing the bilingual education has been described, while, the third section describes the progressive growth in the legislation for bilingual education. The fourth section is the story of the updates and reauthorizations in the legislative status of the bilingual education.