Bilingual Schooling in the United States, Revised Edition by Theodore Andersson and Mildred Boyer, and: Resource Guide to Bilingual Education: A Selective Bibliography of Recent Publications by Theodore Andersson (review)

BILINGUAL SCHOOLING IN THE UNITED STATES, REVISED EDITION BY THEODORE ANDERSSON and MILDRED BOYER (Austin: National Educational Laboratory Publishers, 1978. 474 pages including appendices and index.) RESOURCE GUIDE TO BILINGUAL EDUCATION: A SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY THEODORE ANDERSSON (Austin: National Educational Laboratory Publishers, 1978. 105 pages, $42.50 per set.) It is a little over ten years since Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. The most immediate effect of that legislation was to make embarrassingly evident the widespread confusion over the short- and longrange goals of bilingual education, its proper recipients and implementors, the structuring of bilingual programs. The basic issues underlying these questions had been little clarified by emotional debate. The U.S. Office of Education sought the compilation of a manual providing theoretical orientation and practical guidance. This labor fell to Theodore Andersson, long known as a voice crying in the wilderness for bilingual education, and Mildred Boyer. Together they produced the 1970 Bilingual Schooling in the United States. In his updating of this seminal work, Andersson undertakes a critical questioning of the past ten years of bilingual instruction. He finds some evidence of a favorable shift in public attitudes (in the 1960s, a school official advised Andersson and Boyerto substitute a euphemism for thedisreputablesounding bilingual). Andersson is also impressed with the 1974 Supreme Court decision obliging San Francisco schools to provide meaningful instruction for non-English-speaking Chinese students; the book includes the justices' opinions in an appendix. However, his 1978 remarks are far from constituting a crow of triumph. Andersson is especially dismayed by bilingual programs' disregard for one of his long-held tenets: that bilingualism is intrinsically desirable. That numerous U.S. citizens find bilingualism a liability rather than an asset points to structural flaws in U.S. society and schooling. From this viewpoint, Andersson deplores those programs—in effect, all programs authorized by state acts—that treat students' non-English language as an impediment which one must temporarily accommodate but which will cease to be a problem with the successful transfer to English-language instruction. Opposing this transitional or compensatory model, Andersson continues to plead for "not only the maintenance, but the full cultivation of the non-English language" (p. 78). What is new in 1978 is his great emphasis on biliteracy as necessary condition for bilingual maintenance and enrichment. To neglect the reading and writing of the non-English language is to ensure it will never attain full validity as a vehicle of communication. For Andersson, this practice is 80VOL. 33, NO. 2 (SPRING 1979) profoundly destructive of bilingualism and of bilinguals: "most of our transitional programs are designed only to produce monoliterates, at best semi-literates, what Hertzler calls 'divided men'" (p. 166). Viewing this incomplete and often counterproductive implementation of the 1968 act, Andersson calls for the drafting of "a new statute that will really be bilingual and bicultural not only in name but in effect" (p. 176). Andersson has never avoided making public statements that will strike many as Utopian; his new chapter on "Preschool Bilingual Education" (pp. 153-69) proves his continuing lack of trepidation. He argues for encouraging (rather than teaching) children from eighteen months to three years old to acquire the beginnings of reading skill in more than one language. His evidence for the feasibility of this plan is eclectic: Montessori's description of "sensitive periods" (critical periods in learning), Glenn Doman's work with early readers, and, above all, documentation of case histories involving parents dedicated to raising genuinely bilingual offspring. Those who become convinced of preschoolers' capacity and eagerness to read two languages may yet wonder about the eventual encounter between biliterate preschooler and U.S. school system. Andersson's reply is: "the school system will have to adjust to this novel situation and learn how to challenge children with new educational experiences. Uncomfortable though it may be, schools will have to change" (p. 177). Andersson has a record of making improbable-sounding remarks that later turn into quite acceptable assertions; one hopes that widespread preschool biliteracy will prove to be one ofhis realizable Utopias. Andersson has also produced a supplementary bibliographicguide. Most entries are new publications from 1968-1978, although...