Loco, Completamente Loco

The many failures of "bilingual education"

Glenn Garvin from the January 1998 issue

(Page 9 of 9)

"What am I going to do, Dad?" Oscar asked after he'd told the story. "They won't listen to me at all."

Fernando didn't answer for a minute. He was still marveling at the insane mutation of a small act of kindness to some immigrant kids two decades earlier. He had gotten involved with the schools in the first place because they were trying to segregate his children under the guise of academic tracking. Now they were trying to do it again, to his grandchildren, under the guise of language instruction.

Finally he spoke. "I guess you're going to have to do what I did, when they wouldn't listen to me about your classes," he counseled Oscar. "You're going to have to run for the school board."

Oscar did. He won--it turned out that a lot of Redwood City parents had been hoping someone would voice their discontent about TBE--and though it took some time, he helped rein in the program's worst excesses.

Now, at 73, Fernando is mostly retired from politics. But last fall, when he heard about the California ballot proposition that would cut back TBE, he stopped by one of the campaign offices to find out what it was all about. Impressed at the explanation, he took home some signs bearing the proposition's slogan, "English for the Children," in both English and Spanish. He stuck them in his front lawn.

That evening, the doorbell rang. "Excuse me, mister," a woman--a Salvadoran, by the sound of her Spanish--asked when Fernando answered. "I saw your sign. Do you teach English here? My children need to learn it."

"I'm sorry, the sign is about something else," Fernando replied. "But why do you need an English teacher? Don't your children go to school?"

"Of course they do," the woman replied sadly. "But at the school, they only teach Spanish."

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