July 14, 1969
Page 19400
BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, 2 years ago the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was amended by the enactment of title VII, the Bilingual Education Act of 1967, which authorized a nationwide study of methods to promote bilingualism for children who come from environments where the dominant language is other than English.
In northern Maine, 26,058 U.S. citizens reside in the St. John Valley. Ninety-five percent of the children learn English as a second language. If a bilingual center funded under title VII could be established in the valley, it would affect approximately 20 percent of all elementary and secondary students in Maine who are handicapped because of their bilingual background.
Unfortunately, the present administration allows only $125,000 for a northern New England bilingual education program for French speaking school children.
Because of the severe limitation of funds, none of the funds appropriated for title VII have been available for French-speaking school children of the St. John Valley in my own State of Maine.
Instead the valley schools have operated a bilingual program under title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides 3-year programs of grants for supplementary educational centers and services to elementary and secondary schools.
I invite the attention of Senators to an article entitled "A Bilingual Culture," published in the May issue of the Maine Teacher, which describes the successful ways in which the St. John Valley schools, operating under title III, have made youngsters more adept in English through the medium of their native French language. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A BILINGUAL CULTURE
(By Glen Wilcox)
(NOTE.-Glen Wilcox is co-director of the Franco American Bicultural Research Innovations Center, a Title III, PACE project at Frenchville and St. Agatha.)
Something exciting is happening in the schools of School Administrative District 33 which comprises the towns of St. Agatha and Frenchville. These towns are located in the northernmost tip of Maine's Aroostook County in the Valley of the St. John River – the so-called Franco-American belt.
The school population of these two towns is housed in three schools – Bailey and Montfort Elementary Schools and Wisdom High School, and 90 percent of the pupils in these schools entered as monolingual French speakers.
For many years these French-speaking youngsters have been the unwitting victims of an educational system and school curriculum that failed to take into account their cultural and linguistic background. Their language is suppressed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. State law demands that subject matter other than languages be taught in English. A campaign has been waged for years by teachers and administrators to eradicate the speaking of French in school classrooms, corridors, and playgrounds, in the well intentioned but mistaken notion that this would automatically lead to the improvement of English skills. Many schools had a variety of rules and regulations to enforce this principle. Punishment for speaking French ranged from loss of lunch tickets to extra English assignments after school.
The results of this uncomprehending policy have been tragic. Deprived of their cultural heritage and suppressed in their language and culture, many children rebel against the system that forces these unreal demands upon them. The French-speaking child, required to attend school taught in a strange and unfamiliar language, passes through a period of intellectual and emotional confusion that may handicap him for life. He loses three to four years in the struggle to acquire enough academic English to compete in the system. Large numbers, discouraged by the struggle. drop out as soon as possible. As they have rarely mastered the basic grammatical concepts of French before they are forced to deal with English, they seldom learn either language well. Often these students leave school functionally illiterate in two languages. The linguistic confusion imposed on these youngsters is a grave handicap in their search for adequate employment. Some, despite their linguistic confusion, succeed. Others seem to reject one language or the other, some refusing to speak English except when absolutely necessary and reverting to French when at all possible, while some reject French entirely, even refusing to speak French to their parents at home. Achievement tests from towns in the St. John Valley reveal that, on the average, test results in reading by pupils from French-speaking homes are three years below national norms.
This was the situation in SAD 33 when the district received an $86,000 grant from the U.S. Government under Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to undertake a research project in bilingual education.
PACE, as the project was first called, began with a six-week in-service summer session for 30 teachers and administrators. The session began with two weeks of sensitivity training under the auspices of professional trainers affiliated with the National Training Laboratory. Sensitivity training leads to an awareness by the individual of the impact he makes upon others, and, thereby, allows him to make needed changes to take advantage of his full potential. So many hangups became apparent, during the course of the two weeks that we feel without this training our project would have been in deep water from the beginning. It soon became evident that bilingualism, per se, was not a handicap. Indeed, bilingualism is viewed as a distinct asset by modern educational standards and Title VII of the ESEA has allocated $7.5 million to the nationwide study of methods to promote bilingualism. It was instead the attitudes and feelings, the social and emotional connotations, the rigid and often irrational educational philosophy in regard to the treatment and teaching of bilinguals that were at the crux of the problem.
Our original goal, prior to sensitivity training, had been to improve the quality of English instruction. We now began to realize that to improve the quality of the finished product of our schools would require much more than this. Attitudes had to be changed. A sense of intrinsic value in French culture and language had to be instilled.
OUT THE WINDOW
We started by tossing out the window the rules that downgraded and suppressed French.
Communication and instruction in French are necessary if one is to realize the worth of the language. Our children bring to school with them years of valuable language acquisition skills, skills which are viewed as a handicap under traditional curricula, rather than the tremendous and valuable resource that they actually are. By using modern linguistic techniques, these French language skills can be the bridge to successful functioning in English. Learnings in one language reinforce learnings in the other. Most linguists agree that the child learns to read that which he speaks, and understands. In the case of the majority of our pupils, that which he speaks is French.
This is the language in which we propose to teach reading. A variety of bilingual schools throughout this country and Europe have successfully proved that bilingualism is a definite possibility, given a correct population and favorable attitudes and incentive.
At the present time several pilot projects in various aspects of bilingual teaching are in operation in SAD 33 schools.
Kindergarten class is conducting reading-readiness activities in both French and English, using graphic illustrations prepared by a local teacher-artist. Numerous scenes, such as the local firehouse, potato harvesting, the shopping center in a nearby town, a barbecue scene on the shores of Long Lake, a town snowplow at work, are illustrated. The initial reading vocabulary will be selected for maximum transferral value in both French and English.
These illustrations, with the accompanying French vocabulary, will next year be incorporated into a professionally printed textbook to be used as a kindergarten primer.
Team teaching, whereby a French-speaking teacher conducts classes in French while the teacher she replaces carries on in English in her class, is being tried with exceptionally good results.
The changes wrought in the students are remarkable. The "jail atmosphere" is gone. A feeling of esprit de corps prevails throughout and morale is higher among teachers than ever before. "We're bilingual," exclaims a bulletin board on one end of a hallway. At PTA meetings children exhibit examples of bicultural historical sites and artifacts and proudly flash green PACE buttons proclaiming their Franco-American heritage.
The first year of operation was, according to the addendum to the original PACE proposal, to be one of research and investigation. At the end of the summer, a team of three co-directors was chosen to spearhead the operation. The "Troika," as the three director, are called, is aided by seven committees. Every faculty member is a member of one or more of these committees. They meet on a regular weekly basis to formulate plans and collect data. The entire faculty attend bimonthly meetings and so far two workshops have been held as part of in-service training – a two-day affair in January and a three-day institute in February.
The Troika has established the Franco-American Bilingual Research Innovations Center (FABRIC) and plans are being formulated for the implementation of the new bilingual curriculum.
Projected plans for the PACE/FABRIC project tentatively call for a fully functioning bilingual curriculum in grades g to three for school year 1969-70, with other grades being added in succeeding years. Eleven classes will be involved in next year's program – two kindergarten and three classes each in grades one, two, three.
TEAM PROCEDURES
The kindergarten classes and one class in each of the other grades will probably be taught by bilingual teachers. The other six classes will employ team teaching procedures wherein an English-speaking teacher will handle the English content and a French-speaking teacher will present the French material. In this way we hope to be able to determine which particular method will best suit our needs. The actual amount of time devoted to each language will be determined by the makeup of the individual groups, but generally, French-speaking groups will receive about 75 percent of their instruction in French with the opposite being true for English-speaking classes. By the end of grade three all groups should be receiving about equal time in all subjects in both languages,
The curriculum materials and techniques will be developed this summer in a six-week practicum to be held in St. Agatha. Videotape and other multimedia approaches will be emphasized during the practicum. Eleven college level courses are being offered in addition to the practicum for all teachers and administrators of SAD 33.
Statistical analysis of other bilingual programs throughout the country has shown the value of teaching children in their native tongue. Children more readily become adept and facile in English when the approach is through the medium of their spoken language and, best of all, the bilingual child has all the advantages that multilingualism offers – enhanced problem-solving ability, cross-cultural appreciation, reading, writing, and speech skills in two languages.
Recent studies of ten-year-olds in Montreal show that in large samples that take into account socioeconomic factors and environmental controls, bilingual students placed higher on standardized achievement and intelligence tests and were more advanced in grade placement than either monolingual French or English speakers.
We hope, here in the St. John Valley, to be able to provide our children with the opportunity to become balanced bilinguals, equally adept in reading, wilting, and speaking two languages, at ease in two supporting and complementary cultures, and capable of making use of the myriad advantages two cultures have to offer.