The History of Bilingual Education- Video Analysis

The overarching ideology present throughout this video is the notion of multicultural and multilingual education. This relates to greater society because America is by and large a multicultural and multilingual country although some people seem to believe there is a national language (which there is not!!). The video details the importance of accepting and embracing a students' cultural identity. It also highlights how long it can take a non-native speaker to fully acquire all the uses of a language. Academic language proficiency can take up to 7 years while conversational language proficiency many only take several years. This finding is significant now because with the proposition 227 students are excepted to become proficient because they are immersed fully with some language supports for a year. The video was in support of bilingual education because it helps students to acquire language through building on the skills and knowledge they already have in their L1. They work with the whole child and understand that language is interconnected and acquisition of English is not sped up by excluding the child's first language as well as their culture.

The one component which is often left out is that students who are english language learners are not all immigrants. Because public policy focuses greatly on immigrant populations children who are english language learners are often assumed to be immigrants.