Bilingual Education in a Northeastern City: Voices Over Time

• In Event: Researching Race and Ethnicity: Methods and Applications in the 20th Century

Abstract

Objectives or purposes


For over a half-century since that time, bilingual education persisted in schools in cities across the country, including this Northeastern city. The idea of bilingual education solidified through national civil rights efforts, local activists and educators, and changes in federal and state law. This project aims to share accounts of bilingual education over time that may be forgotten in current histories of education in this city.


Perspective(s) or theoretical framework


In the United States, monolingualism in schools, or the idea of focusing on one language, has been promoted and contested. Indeed, the idea of learning particular languages has been a place of contest in the very idea of American identity since at least the late 19th century. Contemporary scholars of bilingual education and Latino history also note that language debates emerged from racialized people’s contest of American colonialism that imposed English monolingualism (Ochoa, 2016; Velázquez, 2022; Flores, 2024). The idea of bilingual education rather than monolingualism perhaps reached its peak moment in the Civil Rights era with a series of new laws and court cases, including the Lau v. Nichols (1974) case. This court decision along with others preceding it helped formalize the use of non-English languages as a bridge for students to learn in public schools.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

As a form of public history, the main paper and interviewee stories are presented on the StoryMap media platform to provide an interactive format for both scholars and the public. Within this innovative media, the narrative of the trajectory of bilingual education in this city is coupled with a dozen profiles of individual participants with Creative Commons permission to share their photos and stories publicly (Dougherty & Sampson, 2010).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials


This paper draws on newspaper accounts, public documents, and oral history interviews using a “snowball” sample with former students and teachers across the more than fifty years of bilingual education in this city (Trujillo et al., 2014).


Results


This project connects the Puerto Rican and Latino historic social movements for bilingual education to the stories of people from many racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds that benefitted and sometimes struggled with bilingual education. This community-based project can potentially reunite people in a divided political moment by considering the struggles of language as a common experience for many racial and ethnic groups.


Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

Like other cities, this city had schools that focused on student learning in English and Spanish and a formal agreement between the local public school system and plaintiffs seeking remedy to English-only practices. This shift was pushed by Puerto Rican activists and educators. However, many of these bilingual schools no longer exist and policies changed. Despite recognition for various education reforms in this city, the history of bilingual education is often overlooked. This project is one way to reconnect forgotten histories with a multilingual vision of the future.

Author

• Robert Cotto, Trinity College