The sound you just heard was Pat Robertson's head exploding
Bilingual Education Legislation Expected to Shape African-American Progress and State’s Future For the Next 50 Years, Leader says.
By Darwin Campbell
African-American News&Issues
Dallas-FortWorth, TX
The push to ensure African-American children are bilingual and able to compete for future job opportunities moved forward this week with State Sen. Royce West filed a bill in Austin promoting dual language instruction in all Texas public schools by 2007.
“We are aware of the demographic and ethnic changes that our state demographer Steve Murdoch has forecast for Texas in the 21st Century,” West said after filing Senate Bill 61. “By 2026, the Hispanic population is projected to become a majority of the state’s population. This legislation will create incentives for our teachers to learn Spanish so they can better prepare our students in public schools where a majority of the kids are of Hispanic descent.”
Under the bill, African-American students and other children will be ready for the coming transition by instituting a curriculum that will require all elementary schoolchildren to be bilingual by third grade.
“The United States Census recently announced that already, less than one-half of Texas citizens are Anglo,” West added. “Now is the time to prepare our non-Spanish speaking citizens to live and function in an increasingly diverse and growing multicultural society.”
According to West, African-American children will benefit since speaking and using the language will help when many grow old enough to compete for employment requiring a bilingual background.
“We must get our children ready to compete now to prevent them from being at a disadvantage when that time comes,” he said. “It will be necessary for parents and children to have a working knowledge of the language to function outside the neighborhood.”
Under Senate Bill 61, dual language instruction will enable English-speaking students to learn other languages as early as elementary school.
Currently, the school system provides special programs to teach Hispanics the English language, but few schools emphasize the need for African-American students to learn and Spanish fluently.
