By James Crawford

(NOTE: The footnotes in this article are hot-linked. Click on the highlighted number to go directly to that footnote. Click on the number in front of the footnote to return to the place in the article you just left.)

Bilingual education is counterintuitive. Most people wonder: How could teaching students in their native tongue help them learn English?

Many assume the idea of bilingual education is to go easy on limited-English-proficient (LEP) children, to postpone the pain and confusion of acquiring a new language. They wonder if it wouldn't be better to teach the students English quickly - through "total immersion" - so they can get on with their schooling. Won't it lessen their motivation to learn by prolonging reliance on the first language?

Such attitudes sustained generations of "sink or swim" schooling. LEP students were placed in English-only classrooms, with no special help in learning the language and no access to the curriculum until they did so. Inevitably they fell behind English-speaking peers. Some caught up, but many failed and dropped out.

By the 1960s, a critical mass of educators and policymakers recognized the English-only approach was failing. Bilingual education seemed like a promising, if untested, alternative.