The Negative Impact of Bilangual Education

It is true that, fitting in and adapting to two different lingual and cultural world can accept lasting impacts on individuals, hence, Richard Rodriguez, in his book Achievement of Desire, addresses his struggles as a young boy, trying to adapt to a bilingual rearing and how that procreation alienated him from his uneducated Mexican p argonnts. Additionally in the excerpts How to yielding a feral Tongue, Gloria Anzaldua, while she mainly focuses on the talking to of Mexican the great unwashed in different aspects, also mentions her strife as a bilingual student.Although these two stories are different in legion(predicate) ways but they both reflect the negative impact of living in the borderlands. To better understand those cultural conflicts, it is essential to know exactly what the borderlands rest of and who spans there, but most importantly what they represent in this context. The concept of the borderlands informs a variety of disciplines at the start of the twenty-f irst century, with many studies focusing on the boundaries where two or more disparate conceptual, social, or political entities carrefour productively(Ybarra, 1-3).However, Anzalduas idea of the borderlands as an active place where populate can form their ingest identity and political resistance cadaver the most influential according to multiple respected scholars. Understanding the bioregional and bionomical aspect of the US-Mexico borderlands, amplifies our knowledge of how colonization, exploitation, and racism impact the land and mostly the Chicanos. Furthermore, nonpareil can attribute the concept of borderlands with bilingual education with both incline and Spanish being the two territories in question, as fancyd by both Anzaldua and Rodriguez.In Anzalduas essay How to Tame a Wild Tongue she describes her early childhood struggles in indoctrinate. One of her memories from elementary school was when she was mouth Spanish with her friends during recess, they would te ll her If you want to be American, speak American. If you dont like it, go affirm to Mexico where you belong. (Anzaldua 43). In this power she is forced to be silent and non speak. Growing up, she was agelessly told from many of her elders that she needed to speak better side, and sound more American.Anzalduas own m advanced(prenominal) was ashamed of the way that she spoke English, saying it sounded like a Mexican. She reflects on two speech classes that she was required to dissipate with all other Chicano students that had only one purpose, to get rid of their accents. In childhood we are told that our speech is wrong. Repeated attacks on our endemic tongue diminish our feel of self. Until I can take pride in my diction, I cannot take pride in myself. (Anzaldua 45-46). Part of wording includes culture identity.It is unfair for people to feel ashamed of their identity due to the way they speak. Your language is what keeps you affiliated to your homeland and you should not feel guilty for speaking it. One should not have to go through speech classes to correct a native accent the accent is a part of your identity, it is part of who you are. You should not be ashamed to speak and express yourself, because you should never be judged on how you speak, but by the content of what youre saying. From adolescence the dominants are imposing their degrading views on the subordinates.Many of the teachers that approached these students, telling them if they want to speak Spanish go back to Mexico, are making assumptions based on prejudice about the individuals. The constant degrading ultimately lowers their self-esteem, making it difficult for them to feel that they can sweep over being a part of the subordinate group. Anzaldua however rebels against these comments. She seems contrasted to the English language and to a culture that does not honor the Spanish language in world-wide or various Spanish dialects in particular.Her general response is one of def iance, for example when she says that to attack an individuals form of expression (in her case, speaking her Chicano Spanish dialect at school) with the intent to censor is a infraction of the First Amendment (40). She makes it very clear that she is determined to be linguistically open despite English oppression free to write bilingually and to jump linguistic codes without always having to translate (41). She is determined always to have a wild tongue. She proves that it is okay to know more than one language and that by speaking Spanish it does not make her less of a person.It possible that she wrote her story partly in Spanish so that she could make a point that she was proud of her native language. Rodriguez suffers the same oppressions but reacted differently to them. If Rodriguez is hostile to the same culture, he does not seem to be hostile to each Spanish or English as such. Instead, he realizes that in American culture, where one language only and educational accompli shment are affiliated to social and material benefit, those who capture the power of language and education are more likely to obtain those benefits.But this comes at a worth because obtaining those benefits usually force emotional and cultural separation from family members who lack language or educational accomplishments. Rodriguez himself admitted that he cannot afford to admire his parentsHe permits himself embarrassment at their lack of education. And to evade nostalgia for the life he has lost, he concentrates on the benefits education will bestow upon him (Rodriguez, 15). Even Henry Staten, in his essay, remarks how his education, which culminated in a Ph. D in English from Berkeley in 1976, gradually alienated him from his uneducated, Mexican-born parents (Staten 8-10).In all, from both excerpts, we encounter the negative impact of bilingual education. Rodriguez, for whom monolingualism in English becomes a strategy for success in U. S society, brings his personal experien ce to the political realm by promoting English as the sole language of public education in the U. SAnzaldua, on the other hand, reflects her linguistic background with a fine toothed comb, un tangling the many strands of English and Spanish that coexist in their multilayered identity. (Ramsdell 12-16) The diversity within America is constantly growing, which in turn means American culture is frequently changing. With all of these new and foreign cultures migrating to the U. S, come many new languages. Generally, many believe that language is power, but yet, people are constantly being silenced because of their rugged English and accent. While their politics differ widely, both Rodriguez and Anzaldua lives have been perpetually altered due to their linguistic affiliations, and most significantly by straddling on the borderlands.