Education

Bilingual is beautiful

by Seth Gitell

Back in the 1990s, there was a moderate Republican governor who had hopes of getting on a national presidential ticket. He'd helped his state bounce back from a recession, and things looked promising for him. But then the governor embraced a series of reforms that put him in conflict with immigrant groups and opened him up to charges of xenophobia. His name was Pete Wilson, of California, and we don't hear much from him anymore.

Now a state senator named Guy Glodis (D-Worcester) is sponsoring a bill to limit bilingual education in Massachusetts. He held a press conference at the State House Tuesday that was jam-packed with people irate about the proposal -- and at least one person who supported it: Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sponsored California's Proposition 227, which eliminated bilingual education from that state in 1998. Glodis maintains that he only wants to help immigrant children, who often have low test scores and difficulty learning English. But most of those in attendance at the press conference didn't want to hear about it. Representative Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge) got so upset with what Glodis had to say that he leaped up during the question time to protest that the average bilingual-education student spends only two and a half years in "transitional" programs -- not the five to seven years that Glodis claimed.

Glodis would need the support of Governor Paul Cellucci, House Speaker Tom Finneran, and Senate President Tom Birmingham to pass the bill. But he shouldn't count on getting much help from the corner office. Cellucci is a key ally of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush. And Bush is doing everything he can to capture the Hispanic vote for the GOP -- which means he's staying as far away as possible from anything that smacks of English-only sentiment. Even Unz acknowledges that Bush has "come out against radical change in bilingual education." No one but Glodis, apparently, wants to become the next Pete Wilson.