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508 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1990)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0508 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Bilingual education is a seemingly simple label for a complex phenomenon. One source of its complexity is its ambiguity; it is used in a technical sense to refer to programs that incorporate the use of two languages in the classroom but in a popular sense to refer to any kind of program for so-called bilingual children. Children who are called bilingual come in many different categories, as do the educational programs designed for them. In the North American context, bilingual children tend to be thought of as members of language-minority groups - Hispanic or Southeast Asian. Many of these children, in fact, are only transient bilinguals-monolingual speakers of a home language before they go to school and monolingual speakers of English 12 years later. There are also, however, natively bilingual children, those whose parents use two languages in the home; social bilinguals, who grow up in communities where two languages are in common use; and elite bilinguals, whose parents use their resources to ensure access to a second language. The existence of these groups of bilinguals needs to be emphasized in a society that tends to identify bilingual children with educational risk. Bilingual education is not only a complex but also a highly politicized issue. Often identified in the American mind with the use of Spanish in the public schools, it actually involves the use of any of several dozen different languages of both indigenous and immigrant groups. Sometimes criticized as a modern innovation, a concession to pressure groups, or an education frill, it has a long and honorable history in this country and abroad. Usually funded as compensatory or remedial, necessary only during a transition period for students learning English, it can also be recommended as a means of preserving the cultural diversity of both indigenous and immigrant peoples, and for giving more Americans access to the advantages of knowing a second language. This issue of The Annals presents background information, research reports, alterna- tive views, and case studies of exemplary programs in the United States. Currently, a policy position in opposition to bilingual education has become expressed in proposals for English-only legislation. Our title, English Plus, is a deliberate variation on that theme. It is taken from a recent study by the National Coalition of Advocates for Students of the problems faced by immigrant children who are entitled to education but too often fail to find the support and services they need inside the schoolhouse door.' It expresses our belief that business as usual in English-only is not enough, that some additional language support is essential for equality of educational opportunity. In the first article, Hornberger presents language planning as a conceptual framework for thinking generally about language issues in education. The following two articles, by Perlmann and Paulston, analyze issues affecting educational decisions for multilingual populations in the nineteenth-century United States and in other countries today. These are followed by two statements on English-only: in favor, by Imhoff; against, by Madrid. 1. National Coalition of Advocates for Students, New Voices: Immigrant Students in U.S. Public Schools. (Boston: National Coalition of Advocates for Students, 1988), p. xiv. 9

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