I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Fast on the heels of a report that New Mexico’s 2008 high school graduation rate was 54 percent — compared to a national high school graduation rate of 69 percent — Gov. Bill Richardson and New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary Veronica García took center stage to trumpet yet another attempt at solving the education mess in our state.
One long overdue idea to fix our pathetic public schools’ performance is mandating dual-language instruction for all New Mexico students in K-12.
It’s an idea that has successfully worked here before. According to New Mexico historian and educator Maurilio Vigil, in the 1870s the Jesuits started a private college in Las Vegas, New Mexico, when our state was still a United States territory. Called the Las Vegas College, it proudly advertised itself as “the only college in the country in which studies are pursued in the dual languages.”
The quality of the school was so high that students attended from as far away as Denver and Pueblo, Colorado and Chihuahua and Durango, Mexico. Among the school’s alumni were future Mexican President Francisco Madero (who lead the Mexican Revolution against the tyranny of Porfirio Díaz) and New Mexico’s first lieutenant governor and second governor, Ezequiel C de Baca.
Census data show that 28 percent of New Mexico families speak Spanish at home. Add to that the use of First American languages among New Mexico’s diverse tribes, plus immigrant households from other countries speaking multiple languages, and it’s not hard to figure out that perhaps as much as one-third of our state’s population has dual language capabilities.
Rather than build on this potentially strong language capacity as a basis for creating a world-class education system, New Mexicans have inexplicably preferred to parrot the English-only tripe that passes for education policy in this nation.
We willingly suppress and ignore the opportunity presented to us by families steeped in the ability to speak more than one language.
From a purely practical angle, how much more attractive would New Mexico be to international companies seeking workers with multiple language abilities?
This isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff, either.
Two of the leading researchers on the value and impact of dual language education in the United States are Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier. Both have studied second-language programs for years in schools across the country.
Based on data they collected, including more than 2 million minority student records for more than 20 years, what they have found includes:
Personally, I can attest to the power of dual language education. All three of my children attended Albuquerque’s Longfellow Elementary School, one of the first dual language public schools in the state. All three are now young adults and have benefitted immensely from their dual language education.
In contrast, I was educated in a northern New Mexico public school system that punished us for speaking Spanish. This practice was enforced despite the fact that some 90 percent of my elementary school teachers spoke Spanish fluently.
As a result of my public school mis-education, I had to re-learn Spanish as an adult. While I am once again fluent in Spanish, the journey to reconnect with my native language and culture should never have been necessary.
Gov. Richardson and Sec. García are uniquely positioned to create a climate in our state that mandates dual language education for every New Mexico child.
Gov. Richardson was raised in Mexico and is fully bilingual and bicultural. He would be the first to admit his language and cultural literacy has given him a huge edge in his public service career.
Similarly, Sec. García was a Chicana student activist when she attended the University of New Mexico in the early 70s.
Both of them know first-hand the power dual language education can have in propelling our school kids into the top tier of students across the country and around the globe.
¿Por qué no lo ponemos a prueba ahora mismo?
