Bilingual Education

May I first preface my preliminary report by saying that the reason why I chose this topic is a result of the personal history that my family has with bilingual education. On my mother's side, I am the second generation to be born in the United States. My great grandparents could not speak any English, my grandparents quickly became bilingual when they immigrated here from South America out of necessity, and my mother is definitely bilingual but because the dialect of Spanish that was spoken in her household was not that of what is considered to be "higher Spanish", she actually flunked her Spanish class in school. During my mother's childhood, she was only to speak Spanish within the family and within their household. When my brother and I were born, this transformed into being proud of being American born and that to be truly American, you must speak and only communicate in English - anything else is unacceptable. Fortunately, this is no longer the trend within the immigrant and bili...