Philosophy of ESOL Education

A nation’s most valuable resource is its children. Accepting this truism is the first step in building a philosophy of education regardless of your endorsement area. In ESOL, there are two other facts that are paramount. The first is that no country exists in a vacuum. In order to function on the world stage, a nation and its people must be able to communicate with people around the world. To assume that the whole world will speak your language is, at the least, egocentric. To compete in the world market, a nation’s people must be bilingual. The second fact one must acknowledge is that America is great because it is an amalgam of the greatest nations on Earth. No single nation or nationality has everything needed to dominate the world. But, put bits and pieces from all nations together, and you can create the greatest assembly of humanity ever. This is the United States of America.
The future of any country, but especially this one, depends upon its ability to educate its children and to communicate with the world. To deny a people of either of these resources is to relegate them to an eternity of second-class status on the world stage. This is an unfortunate and avoidable fate for any nation, but to set the US up for this fate is inexcusable. With our mix of cultures, America should be able to dominate the world in economics, politics, and humanitarian efforts. However, if we don’t encourage our children to be able to communicate with the world it its variety of languages, it will be easy for the rest of the world to shove us to the back and to ignore us as though we are speaking a foreign language (so to speak). As ESOL teachers and possibly policy makers, we have the unique opportunity to educate American society about this danger as well as to set up a system whereby we can take full advantage of an untapped resource: English Language Learners.
Once we accept the fact that it is of vital importance that we do everything in our power to help our young people become bilingual, it is just a short step to discover a readily available method of achieving this goal: bilingual education for English Language Learners. By educating our ELL students in a bilingual situation we not only equip them to participate in American life by teaching them English, but we enable them to take advantage of a (for them) natural ability and put it towards success in the world market. Ongoing support of these students in their L1 while at the same time ensuring their mastery of English would help us create true bilingualism in a significant portion of the population. Additionally, according to NABE (2004), “Studies have consistently shown that developing ELLs’ native-language skills leads to higher levels of academic achievement, as well as proficient bilingualism and biliteracy.” When we help these students maintain and improve L1 fluency while at the same time achieving academic literacy in English, we are not just enabling these children to function in American society. We are enabling them to be ready for college work in English, bilingual certification in their L1 and English, and a myriad of employment opportunities from police officers, to teachers, to doctors, to diplomats.
When ELL students are not given adequate L1 support and are therefore not enabled to achieve true literacy in their native language, full academic literacy in English is even less assured. By denying these students fluency in L1, we are, in effect, denying them a fair opportunity to become academically literate in English as well. This renders our ELL students illiterate in two languages, instead of allowing them the opportunity to become fluent in two languages. By making this population illiterate two times over, we are virtually guaranteeing them a life of poverty, discrimination, despair, disillusionment, and marginalization. At the same time, we are depriving our society of the contributions these students may have had to offer, if only they had been allowed the tools to learn and communicate. Is the cure for cancer, diabetes, or global warming trapped in a brilliant mind because that child was not given the tools to effectively learn and communicate? We can’t know until all children are allowed to achieve full fluency in their L1 and L2.
Finally, we must remember that America is the Land of Opportunity. And yet, we are allowing our educational system to squander an opportunity that has been handed to us at little expense, and no effort. By creating a bilingual program to serve our ELL students, we would at the same time be creating a bilingual program for all students in our schools. If we utilize bilingual programs and incorporate some immersion philosophies (in the combining of native and non-native speakers in certain situations), we could create a nation on bilingual, bi-literate students.





Resources
"National Association for Bilingual Education - Bilingual Education."
National Association for Bilingual Education. 22 June 2009 .