i BILINGUALSIM IN THE UNITED STATES AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO PLURALISM Joseph J. Pizzillo Foi ndations of Education Department Glassboro State College Bilingual education is not new in the United States. During the 19th century Spanish-American schools existed in several southwestern states, among them New Mexico where both Spanish and English were official state languages.1 And in the cities of Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis, there were German-English bilingual schools which, at times, were not merely sanctioned but actually required by law. For example, in 1840 Cincinnati amended its city charter to require the Board of Trustees "to provide a number of German Schools under some duly qualified teachers for the instruction of such youth as desire to learn the German language or the German and English languages together." Less well known is the fact that not only the immigrant but also the native American maintained his own schools. The Cherokee printed a weekly newspaper in Cherokee and organized curricula in which subjects were taught in Cherokee. All of these activities lasted until the treaties were signed in the mid-18th century. The printing presses were then dismantled and sent to the Smithsonian Institute, and the schools closed their doors. Other bilingual programs met similar .fates. World War I nationalism, for example, led to the demise of German -English bilingual programs.4 The re-emergence of public commitment to bilingual education has been painfully slow. It was given some impetus in 1960, when the national census revealed the low educational level of Mexican-Americans. One important response to this fact occurred in October 1966, when the National Education Association sponsored a conference entitled "The Spanish-speaking Child in Schools in the Southwest." The conference report, "The Invisible Minority," recommended strongly the establishment of bilingual programs. Other conferences followed. Among them was the April 1967 Texas Conference for the MexicanAmerican . At this conference existing bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language programs in Texas were demonstrated . Conference participants included not only educators but also state and federal legislators. They agreed that bilingual education should become a major responsibility of the federal government in partnership with the states.^ 2 Senator Yarborough of Texas took up the cause and introduced a Senate bill proposing that special funds be allocated for bilingual education. Funds were to be allocated on the basis of the number of Spanish-surname children in the school district. As a result of hearings which Yarborough conducted in the summer of 1967, the U.S. Office of Education established the MexicanAmerican Affairs Unit, an in-house lobby for Mexican-Americans. Concern for other non-English speaking groups ultimatelyled Congressman James Scheuer of New York to rewrite Yarborough's bill to include all non-English-speaking children. In this form the bill was passed in January 1968 as the Bilingual Education Act Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The House at this point voted 96-95 to uphold the Appropriations Committee recommendation that the Act not be funded. After intensive pressure from the White House, however, the Act was funded with $7.5 million. This was, as noted by one commentator, "a far cry from the $40 million that educators estimated was needed to do an adequate job."6 Seventy-six school districts received funds from the Act to initiate programs for the 1969-70 school year. The overwhelming majority of the programs were for Spanish-speaking children, but there were programs designed for speakers of French, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Navaho, and Cherokee. The districts were allowed considerable latitude in developing programs, and, consequently, no single design for the programs emerged. There was an attempt, however, to outline in general terms the nature of bilingual education programs. A DEFINITION OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION / Armando Rodriguez, chief of the Mexican-American Affairs Unit, spoke to this point in his May 1969 speech.^ The newly funded programs, he emphasized, were not meant to be mere glorified versions of remedial reading or English-asa -Second-Language programs. Rather, the student should increase his competency in both languages, and both should be used as vehicles for content instruction . Along with the instructional use of language should go an emphasis on culture. Rodriguez...