Benefits And Necessity Of Bilingual Education In Schools And Universities - Essay Example

The broader view perceives bilingual education as the presence of double languages, and, hence, tasks for students, in an instructional environment. However, while many people think bilingual education is ineffective and unnecessary, I have discovered it to be otherwise. Critics have opined for long that bilingual education is financially beyond most foreign parents and, therefore, unnecessary. Their view has always been that the cost of educating the minority-language learners in classes undertaking bilinguals in foreign countries is more than that it requires educating students in dominant-only language programs (Crawford 71).

A political view has also stated that encouraging bilingual education in universities encourages minority-language students to go against assimilation initiatives as they protest the teaching of the dominant language (Crawford 39). Although most of them are willing to live as part of mainstream society, they are not as ready to let go or alter their culture and native languages. This aspect is further compounded among the more informed university students who tend to associate the term “bilingual student” with uneducated or poor backgrounds as it has been stereotyped in the US or Europe (Lindholm-Leary 68).

Furthermore, a public perspective of government-implemented programs on bilingual education has been of that intended to assimilate immigrants into the American culture hence, working in an opposite direction as to its intended outcome. Most foreign students are welcomed with the idea of being isolated linguistically, limiting their learning and earning potential while in foreign countries.