Bilingual Education, Past, Present, and Future
Please join us in Auerbach 320 or online this Wednesday, Feb. 1, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m., for our next meeting of the University of Hartford Philosophy Club as Mary Janeczek discusses the topic of bilingual education, past, present, and future.
To join the meeting online click the button below. If you have trouble joining, call Brian Skelly at 413.273.2273.
It is puzzling to many that there ever was aggressive political opposition to a method of teaching second language learners, enough even to ban it by law in some states, including California, Arizona, and Massachusetts. Even in those states, it has managed to sneak back into the classroom in some form or another with little opposition, its former opponents apparently having moved on to other causes.
Designed to be in service of students of non-English-speaking immigrant backgrounds, bilingual education is a method of education based on rigorous, ongoing research that has a variety of forms, the most promising of which involve optimal inclusion and engagement of second language learners with students in the mainstream, the absence of which in the classroom leads to long-term language-acquisition disorders, such as either illiteracy or aversion to reading in one or both languages, leading to problems in other academic subjects.
In the past, political opposition to bilingual education was a divisive influence that sometimes drew even superintendents, principals, and teachers themselves to back away from rigorous and whole-hearted enforcement of the method, leading to mediocre results that sometimes fanned the flames even more against it.
Mary Janeczek (A.B. Boston College, M.A. University of Massachusetts, Ed.D. Boston University) is a longtime professor of Bilingual Education at The College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, Massachusetts. A former elementary bilingual (Spanish) and English as a second language (E.S.L.) teacher, she has also served as Western Regional Administrator for bilingual and E.S.L. programs for the state of Massachusetts. Her interests include language acquisition, E.S.L. methodology, and cross-cultural communication.
An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.
Food and drink are served. Come and go as you wish. Bring friends. Suggest topics. Take over the club! It belongs to you!