Myth: All Asian Pacific American students are spelling-bee champions and science-fair winners possessing 4.0 grade point averages and 1600 SATs.
Reality: Many Asian Pacific American students struggle with the most basic of subjects, especially English. According to the 1997 Language Census report for California public schools, 40% of all Asian Pacific American children are designated as Limited-English Proficient.
The Unz initiative, which would effectively end the state's bilingual programs, threatens to add to the numbers of Asian Pacific American who speak limited English with its one-size-fits-all prescription of immersion in English. Equally troubling, the results of the immersion approach on Asian Pacific Americans are unknown. Indeed, this method has not been tested thoroughly. Fortunately, there are more culturally sensitive alternatives to immersion.
Asian American children hail from a wide range of backgrounds: More than 300 languages and dialects are spoken among 34 ethnic groups, including Chinese, Hmong, Koreans, Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese. Many of them must make difficult cultural adjustments after experiencing the traumas of war and relocation camps at home. Encouraging them to use their native language during these trying periods can enhance their self-esteem. Gay Wong, a bilingual-education specialist, emphasizes the need for "building up, not tearing down" the home language and culture in the classroom in order to be "positively supportive" of children's "self-concept building." Requiring these children to leave their native tongues at the doors of their classrooms is thus more than an academic matter. It makes a difficult cultural adjustment that much harder without any reliable gain in English skills to offset the added emotional turmoil.
The goal of the Unz initiative is indisputable--to prepare students to function as productive members of society. The problem is its method, which flies in the face of a landmark court ruling. On Jan. 21, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Lau vs. Nichols, that schools must provide students with "a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program" in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including appropriate bilingual-bicultural classroom instruction. The lawsuit was brought by 12 non-Anglophone Chinese Americans against the San Francisco Unified School District. The Unz initiative defies the underlying principles of the Lau ruling, potentially denying thousands of Asian Pacific American children the most effective routes to obtaining academic proficiency in the English language.
