Loukas Sinnis
Professor Hardy
FRT-H13
English Only Education vs. Bilingual Education
How much do you expect to learn if you move to another country and speak your native language instead of the country’s native language? This summer, I was at my girlfriend’s house and we were leaving to go get lunch. As we walked out of her garage we passed the Mexican workers who were working on their roof. My girlfriend was being kind and stopped and asked one of them if they needed anything or if they were okay. As she asked, a confused face stared back at her. The man called for one of his co-workers to aid him. The man he called over wasn’t there to answer her question, he was there to talk to the help find a specific worker. They finally found the man who they were looking for and he came over, and again, we asked him the same question. The man responded with, “Could I talk to your padre?” There was eight workers that day at my girlfriend’s house working on the roof, and out of all eight of them, only one was able to speak any English.
Going into this essay I already have a pre-determined answer to the question, English only education or Bilingual education? Some may say this essay will be very biased and one sided but to me it is neither one of those. I have grown up with multilingual family members and have experience with bilingual students and grown-ups. Doing these readings and watching the movie had a null effect on my view. It was interesting seeing and reading about both sides of this, but really it was also very one sided. A majority of the readings and the movie, was extremely biased towards bilingual education. They only seemed to talk about the success stories of people who grew up with bilingual education, but what about all the other failure stories of bilingual education.
My father was born in Athens, Greece. He moved to America when he was only six years old. His father, mother, and sister came with him. His father started off his career in...