This One Would Prohibit Bilingual Education
The next California proposition that may alter the national
political landscape is the proposed Ron Unz Initiative, which seeks to
ban all bilingual instruction in California public schools.
The Unz initiative calls for placing students with limited English
into English- only immersion classes for one year and thereafter
mainstreaming them into regular classrooms. It additionally calls for
holding teachers and administrators legally liable if they do not
implement the terms of the initiative.
Such an initiative, if it were to pass, says Josefina Tinajero, the
president of the National Association for Bilingual Educators, has the
potential to eliminate bilingual education nationally.
“It [‘s anti-bilingual mood] can be very contagious,” says Tinajero,
who is also a professor and assistant dean at the University of
Texas-El Paso. “Unz has said that if they win in California, they will
take their initiative to Washington, D.C.”
Opponents of the initiative see this as the third installment of an
anti-Latino and anti-people of color campaign that has originated in
California and has spread nationwide. The other initiatives were
Proposition 187 in 1994, which called for a series of anti-immigrant
measures, and Proposition 209 in 1996, which dismantled the state’s
affirmative action programs.
Bilingual education is threatened “because the proponents spread
lies and because most people don’t know the research,” says Tinajero,
who notes that Unz is not an educator.
