The Politics of English-Only Education
Article by Bella Wexler | Art by Mallika Sunder
Since the foundation of the United States by immigrants, a complex identity of evolving multiculturalism met with racist xenophobia has consumed our nation. To make a home out of the “New World,” settlers molded its systems according to their own familiarity. Paranoid obsessions with maintaining social, political, and economic dominance compelled Anglican settlers to exclude future immigrant cultures for fear that they would dilute the national culture established by the ‘original’ immigrants. The same motive was used to justify the genocide of Native American communities and is continuously used to subjugate Latinx and Asian immigrants in American society. The best way to kill off a culture is to inhibit its communication. Thus, language exclusivity has been repeatedly weaponized as a tool for erasure. It targets youth as its vehicle.
The American English-Only Education movement refers to systemic efforts to promote English as the official language of the United States and the exclusive language of its children’s education. It is often masked as a national unifier and benevolent tool to help immigrants adapt to American society. However, behind that veil is a legacy rooted in the destruction of cultures perceived to threaten the dominance of Anglican occupants in the ‘New World’ they molded for themselves.
Historically, this movement can be traced back to the financially self-serving xenophobia of the American colonies’ politically elite. According to James Crawford’s At War with Diversity: US Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety, Benjamin Franklin himself spearheaded the movement in Pennsylvania by targeting German immigrants. Franklin was motivated to denounce German language education in Pennsylvania when he lost business in the local German-language printing market to more qualified German immigrants (Crawford 11). He opened an English-only school and warned other property-owning Anglican-Americans of the threat that increasing immigration posed to their stronghold on the local government and economy. The fear was that the early English immigrants would become overwhelmed by immigrants of other cultural and linguistic backgrounds, thereby diluting and eventually overpowering Anglican authority in society. “Unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other Colonies… they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious…” (Franklin, [1753] 1961: IV 484-485).
Later in his political career, however, Franklin adopted a more favorable position on diversity so as to garner German support for Federalism. Similarly, in Louisiana (the only non-Anglican majority state to join the Union), initial English-only efforts intended to advantage Anglican property-owners over Francophones gave way to expanded bilingual operations as overwhelming French influence was undeniable (Crawford 12-13). Language policy seems to always be enforced by the powerful according to how it may impact their retention of power.
In California, initial Spanish-language rights granted after the Mexican-American War were quickly stripped once droves of white settlers from the rest of America relocated west during the Gold Rush. Not long after, Spanish-speakers were forced to prove land ownership in English-language courts, resulting in the loss of 14 million acres of property. Soon, English-only mandates were applied to all official texts used in governmental contexts, marginalizing the population truly native to the southwest region and branding their language and culture as foreign in their own homeland (Crawford 14).
In the case of Native Americans, the US government hired people to kidnap native children and bring them to faraway boarding schools where they were taught to be ashamed of their native tongues and adopt English. Meanwhile, their captivity was leveraged to control their communities back home. Hiding behind glorified rhetorical goals of civilizing the savage, Anglican colonizers pursued their true goals of conquest, cultural hegemony, and the eradication of Native American peoplehood. When a community is stripped of their linguistic independence, they are stripped of their political independence. The nearly a century of forced anglicization of native communities has resulted in generational losses of culture and heritage which continue to be felt (Crawford 15-16). Moreover, the economic and political exploitation that accompanied this continues to severely disadvantage surviving descendants of these populations in the present day.
Among other populations impacted by prejudicial English-Only initiatives are Puerto Ricans, Native Hawaiians, and Asian American communities. All the way into the 1980s, English-Only proponents like the organization ‘US English’ were widely accepted for their purported objectives of national unity. US English’s chairman, John Tanton famously declared, “I am not a racist. I want to bring all members of the American family to share in our Thanksgiving feast - but I also want us to be able to speak to each other when we’re gathered around the table” (Crawford 32). This appeal may have struck a cord with many Americans across the political aisle if it hadn’t been overshadowed by the revelation that this organization claiming to unify the ‘American family’ was also accepting hefty support from white supremicist, new-nazi, and anti-Latino groups. Tanton himself was known for perpetuating Latino stereotypes (Crawford 32-33).
Nowadays, English-Only education is associated primarily with conservative agendas slowly being overturned by bilingual education initiatives. In California, 1998’s highly controversial Proposition 227 which prohibited teaching English Language Learners in their native languages was repealed in 2016 with Proposition 58 backed by proponents of multilingual education (Hopkinson 2017). Remarkably, bilingual education has been found to not only benefit English Language Learners, but also native English speakers. A Michigan State University study found that elementary school students from English-only backgrounds faced significant improvement in their reading and math scores while enrolled in bilingual schooling (Michigan State University 2013).
Unfortunately, even as tides seem to turn against English-Only education, the movement’s centuries of prevalence have produced long term effects which negatively impact both English learners and native English speakers in the global sphere. According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2018 only 20% of all K-12 students in the US were subject to foreign language education compared to a median 92% of their European counterparts. A study conducted by New American Economy found that “Americans lose almost $2 billion each year because of language or cultural misunderstandings” (Not Lost in Translation 2017). They also found that the demand for bilingual workers across the US economy more than doubled between 2010 and 2015. Evidently, if Americans are to compete in the world’s ever-more globalized economy, we’ll have to make up for lost time. That means rewiring American nativist ideals so we may not only celebrate multilingualism, but take full advantage of the benefits such diversity brings to all of us.
Works Cited and Consulted
Anderson, Melinda D. “The Costs of English-Only Education: A Growing Movement to Teach ELL Students in Their Native Languages.” The Atlantic, The Atlantic, 2 Nov. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/the-costs-of-english-only-education/413494/.
Bergen, Amy. “The Benefits of Being Bilingual - Idealist.” Www.idealist.org, 29 Nov. 2021, www.idealist.org/amp/en/careers/bilingual-hired. Accessed 29 Aug. 2022.
“Bilingual Education Has Spillover Effect.” MSUToday | Michigan State University, 10 Sept. 2013, msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/bilingual-education-has-spillover-effect.
Crawford, James. At War with Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 25. Multilingual Matters Ltd., UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150. Web site: http://www.multilingual-matters.com, 2000.
Devlin, Kat. “Most European Students Are Learning a Foreign Language in School While Americans Lag.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 6 Aug. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/06/most-european-students-are-learning-a-foreign-language-in-school-while-americans-lag/.
Hopkinson, Ashley. “A New Era for Bilingual Education: Explaining California’s Proposition 58.” Edsource.org, EdSource, 6 Jan. 2017, edsource.org/2017/a-new-era-for-bilingual-education-explaining-californias-proposition-58/574852?amp=1. Accessed 29 Aug. 2022.
Not Lost in Translation. New American Economy, 2017, http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NAE_Bilingual_V9.pdf.
