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Should The United States Have English Language Learners?

Satisfactory Essays

“Everywhere around the world, they’re coming to America. Got a dream to take them there, they’re coming to America.” Singer-song writer Neil Diamond wrote those lyrics in 1980 and they still hold true today. Similarly two decades earlier, President John F. Kennedy, writing at the request of the Anti-Defamation League, argued “every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendent of immigrants” (Kennedy, 1964, p2). There is no denying the fact that the United States is indeed a nation of immigrants. In the same way, education is the heart of a civilized nation, and it is the education of immigrant children that must remain a priority in our country.
Historical Perspective of English Language Learners Ever since the time of European settlers coming to the shores of the New World, learning to speak the language was a main concern. However, for newly arrived immigrants getting an adequate education was not always easy. As early as the mid-1800s, when many of the state systems of public education were being established, some schools were bilingual. Because of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Chinese children in California were given the right to a public education. It was not until the early part of the twentieth century that there was a push for English-only in the public schools. As a consequence of the United States’ involvement in World War I, teaching of the German language was forbidden in

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