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The Schroeder family with seven of their eventually thirteen children.  My Grandmother remembered 'Grandpa Schroeder' speaking German at the end of his life.

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America was a multilingual country from the beginning.  Indigenous peoples spoke many different languages.  As immigrants poured into the newly-founded nation, they brought with them many European languages.  Many ethnic groups provided education in their mother tongues.  Isolation of ethnic groups in rural America was one factor in educational language diversity.  Another was private and public schools competing for students (Baker & Wright, 2021, p.384).  Remembering the diversity with which America began is important to understanding the history of bilingual education because we can recognize that the monolingual ideology is a political device that does not have roots in the country's lived history.  Take, for instance, the bilingual marriage of my great-great grandparents.  August Schroeder was born in Germany and immigrated in 1874 at the age of 19.  In 1885 he married the Brasher, New York born Etta Fern Bell, of Irish and American decent, in Michigan.

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George Marden, circa 1918 when he married Emma Hazel Schroeder (pictured together, much later, on the left)

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1919 - English Language 'Recommendation'

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1919 - English Language 'Recommendation'

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The wave of immigrants into the country throughout the 1800's and the explosion of that wave at the turn of the century raised concerns about the loyalties of naturalized American citizens.  By 1906, a resolution was passed requiring the ability to speak English in order to become a U.S. citizen (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 385), just 32 years after August Schroeder immigrated and naturalized as a German-born immigrant. In the 1880's the attack on the use of indigenous languages had already become policy through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 383). World War I incited anti-German sentiment and the push for English monolingualism throughout the rest of the American population came came to a head.  The Americanization Department of the United States Bureau of Education made a recommendation in 1919 that all education, public and private, ought to be conducted in English (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 385).  By doing this, the message was clear - loyal Americans speak English.  This is an important moment for bilingual education because it appears to be the foundation of the "English Only" sentiment that even I can remember being spoken of as a child in the 1980's.  This English speaking = American conclusion was devastating for bilinguals.  Programs must have been changed or shut down because by 1923, just four years later, 34 of the 48 states had accepted the recommendation and mandated English only instruction in their schools, public and private.

Although she lived in a time where she was beaten for being left-handed, August and Etta Bell's daughter, Hazel Schroeder, would have had legal access to bilingual education, were it available in her community.  By 1918, however, when she married George Ira Marden, it is certain that none of her children would have access to instruction her father's German language.

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My father, his parents, and his Oma (grandmother) with me, circa 1982.  My Dad's Oma and parents are from the Netherlands, he was born in Canada.

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With the passing of the civil rights act in 1964, channels to the restoration of bilingual education were opened again.  I think this moment is crucial for bilingual education because of all that followed this general act.  In the mid-1960's, when my father was a child, studies were showing that bilingual children in America were really suffering with monolingual education as their only option (Baker & Wright, 2021, p.388).  Much legislation was passed in the wake of the Civil Rights Act to back the validity and necessity, and thereby provide funding, for bilingual programs where they were needed in the country.  By 1970, in the landmark case Lau v. Nichols, it was determined by the U.S. Supreme Court that children who could not speak English were entitled to education in their own language along with English instruction so that they could be on equal academic footing with their English speaking peers (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 389).  This ruling outlawed the mainstreaming of LOTE speakers into monolingual classrooms before they had reached English proficiency.

Even though my father grew up in a time when America was opening up to bilingualism, his Dutch parents chose English for their Canadian family.  My Oma told me that they did this because Dutch wasn't beneficial for their kids in Toronto, Ontario.  If they had known French or Spanish, they would have passed it on (one characteristic of the Dutch is a shrewd practicality).

I chose this picture because it represents the agency that my family had in coming to North America and choosing which language(s) they and their children would speak.  It is interesting that we 'lost' a language by a practical decision made by the immigrants themselves.  My father further assimilated when he went to college in the United States - he dropped his Canadian accent pretty fast when his classmates teased him 'aboot' it! (I'm the only American in this photo, although my father is now a naturalized citizen).

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A tea party in 1998 with so many friends.  (I'm on the far right)

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In 1996, an opportunistic politician by the name of Ron Unz began pushing his personal views of assimilation through false claims about the ineffectiveness of bilingual education (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 394).  This resulted in a movement that I think is very significant for bilingual education.  As I read this portion of the text, I was horrified that the education of children would be sacrificed on the altar of ego and political power, but I suppose this should not surprise me by now.  What I find most significant about this blight on American education history is it's powerful reversal in the years to come.  Although bilingual education was essentially outlawed in California (1998), Arizona (2000) and Massachusetts (2002), the abject failure of English only instruction in the years that followed allowed a sweeping victory for the reversal of that bill in California in 2016 with 72% voter approval (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 397).  Massachusetts reversed this harmful legislation in 2017 and Arizona is working on it.  I can only imagine the impact this nearly twenty year debacle had on the lives of hundreds of thousands of emergent bilinguals.  This illustrates what Baker and Wright go on to explain at the end of the chapter - the history of bilingualism is not a sweeping ascent to better and better policies, rather it is a field of constant change between policies of tolerance and acceptance on one hand, and criticism and rejection on the other (2021, p. 436).

Although I'm encouraged by the reversal of these proposals, the topic saddens me.  I include a picture from my experience of 1998 - my 17th birthday.  This image evokes a lot of feelings for me, I'm surrounded by fully assimilated, yet ethnically diverse Americans, long ago stripped of ethnic languages and cultures, and we have no idea what is going on with our multilingual neighbors.  Four generations from Germany, and only two generations removed from the Netherlands, my understanding of why bilingual education would be helpful or necessary for bilingual students was at a zero.  If you had asked me about it at the time, I probably would have told you, "My grandparents did it, why can't they?"  Through this class I've uncovered this sentiment in myself, a learned resignation passed from generation to generation.  In lieu of reconnecting with our histories, perhaps many Americans who support English only programing are lashing out because if they had to lose their ethnicity to be here, so does everyone else.

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February, 2020 - My Family - from zero to more than seven generations away from immigration and migration.

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December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, ending No Child Left Behind.  ESSA has a lot of hopeful elements that recognize some of the failures of NCLB.  Unrealistic expectations have been replaced with policies that allow greater flexibility for each state to respond to their unique needs, especially in struggling schools.  Tracking ELLs isn't lumped in with all 'under-performing' students, and their progress is tracked by more than test scores (Baker & Wright, 2021, p. 409).  A welcome relief for teachers, ESSA also releases their evaluations from connection to student test scores.  The act is not without flaws, but it is an improvement in many ways, and it will be interesting to see how it works for ELLs as it continues to be implemented.  This is important to bilingual education right now, and it is significant to me as it will surely impact my employment experiences in the next few years.

When I see my wedding photograph, I see modern America.  I feel like I've come full circle - immigration... assimilation... dual-language family again.  My husband's family migrated from Puerto Rico in 1996.  Spanish is an important part of their lives and heritage, we use it daily, if we have a child they will be bilingual as well.  As a family, we are a blended mix of so many things now, with so many precious stories. The history of bilingual education in America is full of plot twists, and right now it looks very hopeful.  I hope I continue to see an America that is open to the multicultural experience that makes my family, and this place, what it is.

Reference:
Baker, C., & Wright, W. (2021). Historical Introduction to Bilingual Education in the United States. In

Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (7th ed. pp. 380-441). Multilingual Matters.