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The University of Massachusetts Boston Human
Rights Working Groups
HUMAN RIGHTS FORUMS
I think the members of the working group should feel enormously proud of all you have accomplished in the last year. You organized two phenomenally successful forums at UMB; I can't recall any events garnering so much attention and attendance. The fact that you had such robust attendance at very harried times of the term reflects well on the working group's excellent organizational skills and the enthusiasm and sense of competence that it has generated since last year. Congratulations to the human rights working group for an outstanding job!
Professor Elizabeth Bussiere,
Political Science Department
The University of Massachusetts Human
Rights Working Group (UMBHRWG) has organized
four human rights forums and is planning a human
rights conference on May 3,
2003. Below is a list of the four forums that have already taken place followed by stories that
appeared in the UMB student newspaper, The
Mass Media, about each of them.
1.
April 25th, 2001. Human Rights in
Chile and Guatemala. Joyce Horman and Jennifer Harbury.
2.
December 12, 2001. Human Rights in
Colombia. Noam Chomsky and German Plata Diaz.
3.
April 24th 2002. The Impact of
September 11th on Human Rights in the United States. Jeff Cohen, Diane Dujon and Merrie Najimy.
4.
October 16th 2002. The human rights implications of bilingual education. Boston
City Councilor Chuck Turner and bilingual educator Berta
Berrisl.
Stories
that appeared in the The Mass Media (the UMB student newspaper) about
these four forums may be found below.
The Mass Media. April 19, 2001
HORMAN
AND HARBURY TO PARTICIPATE IN
FIRST HUMAN
RIGHTS FORUM AT UMASS BOSTON
By Paul Cantor
In the academy award-winning movie, Missing,
she is played by Sissy Spacek and her name is Beth. In the real world her name is Joyce Horman.
After
the bloody 1973 coup d’etat in Chile her husband, Charles, a journalist,
filmmaker and Harvard graduate, was arrested, tortured and killed. Evidence indicates United States intelligence
operatives fingered him, participated in his brutal interrogation and then
directed the Chilean military to have him “disappear.”
In
her book Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala, Jennifer Harbury
provides a harrowing account of how U.S. intelligence operatives were
also responsible for her husband’s death.
These are men who make Tony Soprano look like Snow White. Fear is their most effective weapon. It causes people to step out of their way.
Not
Joyce and not Jennifer.
Next Wednesday in a human rights forum in the
Faculty Club on the 11th Floor of Healey Library from 4:00 to 6:30
P.M., they will discuss evidence of United States government complicity in the
murder of their husbands. The April 25th
forum, which is free and open to all, will be moderated by University of
Massachusetts Professor and author of Encyclopedia of Human Rights Issues Since
1945, Winston Langley. Sergio Reyes, a Chilean folksinger and former
political prisoner will be there with his guitar.
In addition to Sissy Spacek, the Costa-Gavras movie Missing
stars Jack Lemmon. Lemmon received the
best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his portrayal of Charles’
father’s gradual realization that his own government helped overthrow a
democratically elected regime and likely was involved in Charles’ arrest,
brutal interrogation and murder.
The true story of how President Richard Nixon and
his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, with the help of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. based multinational corporations promoted
the coup d’etat in Chile is well known.
Those interested in the blow-by-blow can find it in a report published
by a committee of the U.S. Senate. The report
is called Covert Action in Chile:
1967-1973 and is available on the web. What is not known, however, is
precisely who gave the order to kill Charles.
Was it President Nixon, or Henry Kissinger, or someone else?
Certainly, there is evidence to suggest it may have
been Kissinger. In the February and
March issue of Harper’s Magazine journalist Christopher Hitchins charges the
former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and Nobel Peace Prize
winner of being a war criminal for the role he played in Chile and
elsewhere. But Kissinger has yet to be
arrested and put on trial. Augusto
Pinochet, however, has been arrested and may be tried.
Pinochet, one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th
century, is the Chilean general who with Nixon and Kissinger’s support
overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Salvador Allende in
1973. In a major victory for the
worldwide human rights movement the former dictator was arrested in England in
1998 after a Spanish judge indicted him for crimes against humanity.
Pinochet’s arrest set a precedent. It marked the first time the doctrine of
universal jurisdiction was upheld. The
doctrine of universal jurisdiction maintains that there are some crimes so
reprehensible that those responsible for them may be held accountable in any
country of the world. Ever since Pinochet’s arrest other tyrants charged with
crimes against humanity have felt less secure traveling abroad.
England ruled Pinochet could be extradited to Spain,
then found him unfit to stand trial and allowed him to return to Chile where,
unexpectedly, he was arrested by the Chilean government. Last December Ms. Horman visited Chile to
file a criminal complaint against the former dictator. At the April 25th forum she will
discuss what she hopes and expects will come of that complaint.
Jennifer Harbury’s husband, Everardo, was also
killed by a brutal military government that wouldn’t have been in power were it
not for a coup d’etat engineered by the CIA. In 1954 the CIA helped overthrow
Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and usher in a period of repression that has continued
to this day. In an attempt to get the
U.S. to save her husband’s life Ms. Harbury went on a number of hunger strikes
which almost claimed her own.
Everardo was Harbury’s husband’s nom de guerre. His given name was Efrain Bamaca
Velasques. Bamaca was a guerilla leader
and Mayan Indian who met and married Harbury when she visited Guatemala as part
of her work to help Guatemalan refugees fleeing the repressive military
regime. After he was captured in a military
skirmish a paid CIA agent participated in his interrogation, Harburry
maintains. “I denounce the United
States government,” she wrote, “for routinely paying for information that
everyone well knew was being extracted through the cruelest of tortures, thus
condoning and abetting serious criminal activities as well as violations of
international treaties such as the Geneva Convention.”
The hope is that the Human Rights Forum with Joyce
Horman and Jennifer Harbury will serve as a catalyst for establishing a human
rights program at UMass Boston. As the human rights movement has gained
momentum around the world many universities (including Harvard, Columbia, Yale,
and Essex University in England) have established human rights programs.
Despite the importance of human rights issues to working-class students,
however, no human rights program exists at UMass Boston.
A human rights program at UMass Boston would: bring human rights issues into the
curriculum, allow students to choose human rights as a major or minor, lead to
collaborative human rights research within the university and between academics
here and elsewhere, and promote future forums in which human rights experts and
activists from around the world might participate.
The importance of bringing human rights issues into
our classrooms was pointed out by Harvard Law Professor, Henry Steiner.
“Literacy about human rights,” said Steiner, “is urgently needed within the
university” because human rights issues touch “many ideals of an open and just
society that are the university’s own ideals:
the equal dignity of human beings, freedom of inquiry and advocacy,
broad political participation.
Involvement by the university with the concerns of international human
rights should then take active as well as scholarly expression…”
The question of how the upcoming human rights forum
relates to a wide variety of academic disciplines is addressed in a document
recently distributed to all faculty members by its organizers. The document, How Does the Human Rights Forum
Relate to Your Class, indicates how anthropologists, political
scientists, biologists, mathematicians, and other academics might be inspired
by the forum to discuss how human rights issues relate to their field of
study. Biologists, it notes for example,
“used genetic testing to assist Argentineans searching for grandchildren who
had been kidnapped during the dirty war and
raised by military families” and mathematicians developed techniques for
evaluating human rights data.
The Human Rights Forum is sponsored by: Offices of the Provost and Dean, College of
Arts and Sciences, College of Public and Community Service, the Student Senate,
the Gaston Institute; Departments of Anthropology, Economics, Hispanic Studies,
Political Science and International Relations, Women’s Studies; Arms Advocacy
for Resources for Modern Survival, Politics Society, Radical Student Alliance,
and the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences.
The Mass Media (UMB's Student Newspaper)
April 19, 2001 Editorial entitled "Encouraging."
This week The Mass Media is running multiple contributed articles about the upcoming Human Rights Forum at UMass Boston. The list of organizations supporting this event is quite lengthy and gives credence to a comment in Paul Cantor's article [p. 1] about the "importance of human rights issues to working-class students."
Human rights are of central concern to most reasonable individuals and they stand as one of the core values that are shared in the national consciousness. While students protest globalization and the erosion of workers' rights, bemoan the slashing of health and welfare services domestically, and stand aghast at torture and brutality here and abroad, these integral aspects of the human condition are only dealt with tangentially by most US post-secondary liberal education programs, including here at UMass Boston.
There can be no clearer sign of the students' interest in human rights than the number of student organizations supporting this forum. All involved with the organization and production of the fourm should be commended and, rightfully, fell proud. This event should make all associated with UMB feel pride—here is a forum that deals with matters of importance without deceit and highly paid public relations specialists. Here is a forum that is aimed at humans, and is about humans and human rights.
The Mass Media considers the recognition of Joyce Horman and Jennifer Harbury, two tireless human rights advocates, as one of the most honorable acts this university could be involved in. It is encouraging, and a bit heartwarming, to see so many students and faculty working together to further the cause of justice."
The Mass Media. February
1, 2001
By
developing a human rights program the University of Massachusetts Boston can play a leading role in the global human rights
movement and benefit from the support, funding, and favorable publicity such an
effort would entail.
The
worldwide human rights movement has led to international criminal tribunals
being set up for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the arrest on charges of crimes against humanity of
former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, an
increasing focus on poverty and income distribution in international forums,
and an effort to establish an international criminal court. It has also led to human rights programs
being established at scores of universities around the world. But no human rights program yet exists at an
urban working class university such as UMass
Boston.
The
importance of bringing human rights issues into our classrooms was pointed out
by Harvard Law Professor, Henry Steiner.
“Literacy about Human rights,” said Steiner, “is urgently needed within
the university” because human rights issues touch “many ideals of an open and
just society that are the university’s own ideals: the equal dignity of human beings; freedom of
inquiry and advocacy; broad political participation. Involvement by the university with the
concerns of international human rights should then take active as well as
scholarly expression.”
A
human rights program would help provide UMass Boston
with a more pronounced international profile.
It would complement its public policy and public and community service
programs. It would lead to greater
interaction between students and faculty here and individuals, universities and
organizations involved in human rights activities. It would help expose students to issues of
importance to the world community of which they might otherwise remain unaware.
It would provide for the opportunity for collaborative research between faculty
members in different departments and between faculty members at UMass Boston and other universities. It would take
advantage of our good fortune in having an expert on human rights, Winston
Langley, on our faculty. It would
generate favorable publicity for the University and likely lead to financial
support from individuals and organizations engaged in human rights work.
UMASS FORUM TO FEATURE NOAM CHOMSKY
ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA
By Paul Cantor
“Colombia, A Human Rights Disaster,” a
human rights forum featuring Noam Chomsky, and open to
the public will take place from 4-7 PM on Wednesday, December 12 in the Faculty Club on the 11th
floor of Healey Library at the
University of Massachusetts Boston.
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Professor Chomsky is a world renowned linguist and
human rights activist whose carefully reasoned views have stirred controversy
wherever he goes. In October, for
example, he and writer Christopher Hitchins engaged
in a battle of words that was carried in The
Nation magazine over the meaning of the September 11 terrorist events in
this country.
As
a linguist Professor Chomsky might point out that the term “terrorist” means
different things to different people.
President George Bush might say that people responsible for atrocities
such as the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center are terrorists as are
all those who support them.
But
what about those who support governments who torture and kill people struggling
for the rights of workers and peasants?
The Bush administration, for example, is supplying the military in Colombia with enormous amounts of aid. The military in Colombia has a horrendous record of human rights abuses. Should President Bush and his supporters,
therefore, be considered terrorists?
It
is questions like this that will be addressed in the forum next Wednesday. Participating in the forum along with
Professor Chomsky will be Germán Plata Díaz. Mr. Díaz is a human rights worker from Barracancabermeja, Colombia.
Barracancabermeja, Colombia’s most important oil refining center, is a city of 150,000
people located in a war torn zone on the Magadalena
River north of Bogota. Like much of the rest of the country it has
seen its share of violence. Here is how the latest Amnesty International
report characterized the situation in Colombia last year:
“The human
rights crisis continued to deepen against a background of a spiraling armed
conflict. The parties to the conflict intensified their military actions
throughout the country in campaigns characterized by gross and systematic
violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The principal
victims of political violence were civilians, particularly peasant…Human rights
defenders, journalists, judicial officials, teachers, trade unionists and
leaders of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities were among those targeted.
More than 4,000 people were victims of political killings, over 300
''disappeared'', and an estimated 300,000 people were internally displaced. At
least 1,500 people were kidnapped by armed opposition groups and
paramilitary organizations; mass kidnapings of
civilians continued. Torture - often involving mutilation - remained widespread,
particularly as a prelude to murder by paramilitary groups. ''Death
squad''-style killings continued in urban areas. Children suffered serious
human rights violations particularly in the context of the armed conflict. New
evidence emerged of continuing collusion between the armed forces and illegal
paramilitary groups. Progress continued in a limited number of judicial
investigations, but impunity for human rights abuses remained the norm.”
And the U.S. State Department report on the human rights situation
in Colombia in 2000 commented:
“Throughout the country, paramilitary
groups killed, tortured, and threatened civilians suspected of sympathizing
with guerrillas in an orchestrated campaign to terrorize them into fleeing
their homes, thereby depriving guerrillas of civilian support and allowing
paramilitary forces to challenge the FARC and the ELN for control of narcotics
cultivations and strategically important territories.”
So why did the U.S. Congress approve an emergency aid package this
summer which funneled millions of dollars of aid to the Colombian military and
led to Colombia becoming, according to Professor Michael Klare
of Hampshire College, “the third largest recipient of U.S. assistance” after
Israel and Egypt? President Bush would
argue that the aid is destined to help Colombia deal with drug traffickers. Klare suggests that
the purpose of the aid is to assist military and paramilitary forces’ efforts
to create a climate of terror and thereby undermine support for guerilla forces
which have been attacking the assets of multinational oil companies.
The
December 12 forum on Colombia will be the second in what its organizers, the UMB
Human Rights Working Group (UMBHRWG), hopes will be an ongoing series on human
rights issues. Professor Winston
Langley, a human rights expert from UMB will be the moderator. Professor, poet and member of the UMBHRWG, Cindy
Schuster, will read one of her poems.
Music and refreshments will be provided and there will be a question and
answer period following the presentations.
The
forum is being sponsored by the Student Senate, the office of the Provost, the College of Public
and Community Service, Africana Studies, Hispanic Studies, the Women’s Center,
Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, and the Anthropology Department.
The
HRWG group is composed of faculty, students, staff, and human right activists
whose goal is to establish a human rights center and human rights program,
sponsor human rights forums, and carry out other human rights related
activities. Its next meeting will be on Friday, December 14 in Wheatley
4-141. If you would like to join the
HRWG please come to that meeting or contact Clark Taylor at clark.taylor@umb.edu or 617-287-7364.
THIRD HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM
FOCUSES ON ABUSES AT HOME
by Paul Cantor
Post
September 11th America is a cowed America in which human rights
abuses are condoned and blind flag waving patriotism is encouraged as the Bush
administration prepares for war against Iraq.
That, at least, was the underlying message of the participants in a
Human Rights Forum organized by the University of Massachusetts Boston Human Rights Working Group.
Human Rights in the United
States after September 11 was the theme of the forum which took place last
Wednesday in the Ryan Lounge of McCormack from 5-7:30. Merrie Najimy, President of the Boston Chapter of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Jeff Cohen, Founder of
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and Diane Dujon,
a welfare rights activist and director of independent learning at the College
for Public and Community Service were the three featured speakers. Professor Winston Langley, Associate Provost
and human rights expert, moderated. The
forum was preceded by workshops on immigration and welfare rights.
Merrie Najimy spoke of a new McCarthyism in which the Federal
Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is targeting Arab Americans and Arab immigrants
for arrest and interrogation and singling out the most progressive among them
for especially harsh treatment. She
pointed out, however, that though discrimination against Arabs in the law and
in the way they are depicted in the media has intensified since September 11
such discrimination has a long and sordid history in the United States.
In
1987, for instance, the FBI induced the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) to arrest seven Palestinians and one Kenyan who helped raise funds in Los Angeles for the lawful activities of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
"If these individuals had been United States citizens, there would not have been a basis for their
arrest," the former director of the FBI, William Webster, told the
Congress.
Nevertheless
the case of "The Los Angeles 8" wound its way to the Supreme Court
which ruled that "an alien unlawfully in this country has no
constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his
deportation." (Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee,
1999). This ruling, authored by Justice Antonin "effectively denied to all immigrants in this
country the same First Amendment rights that U.S. citizens enjoy," according to a joint news
release of the Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild,
American Civil Liberties Union and Georgetown University Law Center.
Marc
Van Der Hout, of the
National Lawyers Guild, and co-counsel in the case, furthermore, termed the
decision, "nothing short of outrageous." "It relegates," he said,
"immigrants to a second-class status that is reminiscent of the political
witch hunts of the McCarthy era, which were initially embraced and then
repudiated by history. Our nation of immigrants is now being forced into
political silence, chilled from speaking out about injustices in their homeland
and this country."
After
discussing the Supreme Court's decision in the case of the Los Angeles 8 and other legislation designed to silence pro
Palestinian activities in the United States, Ms. Najimy turned to the
issue of how Arab Americans are stereotyped as "dirty terrorists" in
films and the press. Jack Shaheen's book, Reel Bad Arabs, for instance,
demonstrates how in nearly 900 films this ugly characterization has been
reinforced.
Jeff
Cohen, who followed Ms. Najimy, maintained that the
mainstream media in this country has become an instrument of "mass
distortion" and a mouthpiece for the reactionary policies of the Bush
Administration. Therefore, those
interested in finding out what has really been going on since September 11 have
to resort to what he refers to as the "internet samizdat". The internet samizdat consists of World Wide
Web sites which provide ready access to alternative sources of news. Two of Mr. Cohen's favorite sites for this
purpose are www.commondreams.org and
www.zmag.org.
What
you get in the mainstream media, according to Mr. Cohen, are former government
officials responding to milquetoast questions put to them by flag waving
journalists who have jumped on the patriotic pro Israeli bomb Iraq anti-terrorist bandwagon. These officials even discuss the pros and
cons of torturing terrorists and using tactical nuclear weapons against our
enemies. Imagine, Mr. Cohen encouraged
the audience, how government officials and the mainstream media here would
react if a foreign government suggested torturing a captured CIA agent.
What
you get in the samizdat internet, according to Mr. Cohen, is information that
provides a counterweight to the half-truths and lies in the mainstream
media. That information includes stories
about children dying in Iraq as a result of U.S. sponsored economic sanctions,
negotiations between U.S. government officials and the Taliban in support of
efforts to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan, and criticism by former
United Nations weapon Inspector Scott Ritter and others of the Bush's
administration's effort to tie the Saddam Hussein regime to the September 11
bombing of the Pentagon and World Trade Center and the subsequent anthrax
attacks in an effort to justify going to war against Iraq.
Diane
Dujon, the last to speak at the forum, focused on the
welfare system in the United States and how it stigmatizes poor women. She pointed out that government officials
were quick to recognize and respond to the trauma suffered by the victims of
the September 11 attacks but they refuse to recognize and respond to the trauma
suffered by thousands of poor women who have lost their jobs, been the victims
of domestic violence, fallen ill, or who have been left to care for children on
their own.
Instead,
for reasons of their own, reactionary government officials have provided and
environment in which the ugly, mean-spirited and inaccurate Reagan era
characterization of poor women as "welfare queens" has gained
currency. Indeed, the continued vilification
of poor women as lazy and promiscuous has served the purpose of reactionaries
who seek to dismantle the welfare program altogether and force women to work
despite their family or personal circumstances.
It is not considered work, Ms. Dujon pointed
out, when a poor woman cares for her own children. It is, however, considered work when a poor
woman cares for the children of the rich.
Think,
Ms. Dujon suggested, of the message that is being
sent to poor children in the post September 11 world. On the one hand they hear their mothers
demeaned by politicians and the press and forced to take jobs even when those
jobs don't pay them enough to properly feed and clothe their families. On the other hand they hear the people most
directly affected by the September 11 attacks being exalted as heroes and given
money to help them overcome trauma, get on with their lives, and care for their
children.
The
forum was the third major human rights event organized by the UMBHRWG. The
UMBHRWG is composed of UMB students, faculty, staff, and human rights activists
from the wider community. Its goal is to
establish a human rights center and undergraduate degree granting human rights
program at UMB. If you are interested in
human rights issues you are encouraged to contact us at umbhrwg@hotmail.com. Our next meeting
will be on Friday, May 17 from 2:30
to 4 PM in W4-138 (The Chiapas Room on the fourth floor of
Wheatley).
HUMAN RIGHTS WORKING GROUP FORUM ON
BILINGUAL EDUCATION
by Paul Cantor
The
University of Massachusetts Boston Human Rights Working Group (UMBHRWG) is
sponsoring an October 16th
forum on bilingual education.
An
initiative on the November ballot in Massachusetts would do away with bilingual education. If it passes the 20 percent of students in
the state who are English language deficient but proficient in another language
will no longer be able to study history, mathematics, and other subjects in
their native tongue. They will, in the
view of UMB professor Pepi Leistyna,
therefore be deprived of their right to a decent education.
The
effort to do away with bilingual education in the state has been spearheaded by
California Businessman, Ron Unz, and a group he
sponsors called English for the Children. Unz claims, among
other things, that children who don't speak English do better when they are
forced to take English intensively for one year and then take all their
subsequent instruction in English.
Professor Leistyna challenges this view in his
article below.
The
UMBHRWG consists of faculty, students and staff at the University of Massachusetts Boston and human rights activists in the wider community
whose purpose it is to establish a Human Rights Center and Human Rights Program and carry out other human
rights activities. Its office is in the
College of Public
and Community Service complex on the 4th floor of Wheatley. It holds regular meetings on Friday at 1PM in W4-138. For
more information send email to umbhrwg@hotmail.com.
As part
of its effort to bring human rights issues into the academic arena the UMBHRWG
seeks contributions for future columns from faculty, students, and human rights
activists on and off campus. Essays,
photos, artwork, or poetry dealing with human rights issues will be accepted.
The essays should be approximately 750 words and emailed to umbhrwg@hotmail.com or sent by regular
mail to the Human Rights Working Group, c/o The
Mass Media, M 1/627 McCormack Hall, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrisey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125.
Winning By Deception:
The Unz
Assault on Massachusetts
by Pepi Leistyna
English for the Children, what a clever name for a draconian English-only
organization championed by a
monolingual, multimillionaire with no children, and with no background in
education or linguistics. The following points contradict Unz's
claims.
There
are over one hundred and fifty studies that show how when properly implemented,
including the native tongue is beneficial for linguistic, psychological,
cognitive and academic development.
There
is no defensible theory or body of research to support the claim that students
need only one year (about one hundred and eighty school days) to become fully
fluent, literate, and able to learn content in another language. The majority
of students in California in Structured Immersion did not achieve even
intermediate fluency after one-year. Take for example the Orange Unified School
District:
after the first year, 1%, or six students out of 3,549 were mainstreamed; and
more than half of the students were not ready for specially designed classrooms
with watered-down content. In Canada's immersion programs (which it is important to note
promote long-term bilingualism), students are unable to fully function in the
L2 (the second language) after two years.
Research
shows that it takes children from five to seven years to become fluent and
literate, and thus able to handle the demands of standardized testing like the
MCAS (the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System). That's how long it
took all of us in our first language experience.
If
knowledge is comprehensible in the first language (e.g., the language of math),
then it will be easier to understand in the second language. The catch-up
process should include grade-appropriate content in the native language while
the English improves. Instead, Unz's promotional
pamphlet states, "It [the organization] will NOT throw children who can't
speak English into regular classes where they would have to 'sink or
swim'." So, rather than supporting bilingual education's simultaneous
development of knowledge, language and literacy skills, students will remain in
a segregated and mixed-age holding tank in English with no advancement in the
content areas of Math, Science, and the Language Arts.
Unz
claims that the standardized test scores of over a million students have
improved in California as a result of Proposition 227 (the legislation that
dismantled bilingual programs in that state).
But he fails to inform the public about the inevitability of test
inflation caused by teaching to the test, special test preparation, selective
testing in terms of who gets to participate, class size reductions, political
and financial incentives for those administrators who comply, and eliminating
most school activities that are unrelated to the test. In fact, all students' scores improved,
including those from bilingual programs. In some cases, students in bilingual
programs scored higher overall. What has not significantly decreased in states
that have already adopted English-only programs is the gap between the LEP
students and the mainstream. In Cambridge Massachusetts, the Two-Way Bilingual Education Program has managed
to close this gap in scores to an 8% difference between the Spanish and
Portuguese speaking students and the Native English speakers. There is a 23% difference for the students
that are immediately immersed.
Unlike
Unz's one-size fits all approach, students from
different age groups and backgrounds have different needs. When those needs are addressed, and parents
and caregivers are allowed to be part of the assessment process and are given
an informed choice as to what is best for their children, the results are
outstanding. Take for example Framingham Public Schools in Massachusetts. In 2001, out of the 1,500 students that are in one
of the five programs that are offered, 92% of the third graders passed the MCAS
in English. The teachers responsible for such success, under the Unz initiative, can be sued and banned from working for
five years if they use the native tongue in the classroom.
The
average stay in a bilingual program in Massachusetts is 2.8 years. In programs that are properly
orchestrated, such as Framingham and Cambridge, the average is 2.3 years.
English-only
advocates claim that bilingual education causes high drop-out rates, especially
among Latino/a students. The reality is that only a minority of LEP students
around the country are in bilingual programs. The real issue at hand is that
75% of all linguistic-minority students reside in low-income, urban areas that
have schools that are highly segregated and in rough shape. How is
"structured mixing" of mainstream and linguistic-minority students,
as Unz suggests, going to work in schools that are
segregated because of economic/housing demographics?
Bilingual
education's success or failure depends entirely on the people and institutions
that bring it to life. What needs to be addressed are the harsh racist and
material conditions, incessant harassment of bilingual teachers, segregated
school activities, limited classroom materials, teacher attitudes that belittle
students, weak teacher professional development, poorly designed and unenforced policies, and indifferent leadership that
dramatically disrupt the personal, cultural, and academic lives of
linguistic-minority students.