According to Congressman Edward R. Roybal, a California Democrat, Johnson pushed the concept of bilingual education. On a flight in AIR FORCE ONE, LBJ recalled his teaching experience in a Mexican school-how smart the children were but they could not speak English. They therefore lost valuable time learning to speak English. Indeed, bilingual education in the early days was a simple concept in which the Mexican American child would be bilingual-bicultural and learn to speak both languages. It was never meant to be for remediation, as Dr. George I. Sanchez so aptly put it. In Sanchez’s view, it also included the teaching of Spanish language to Mexican Americans (Acuna, 302-303).
I think it was interesting to see Johnson push the concept of bilingual education to help the Mexican American children learn the English language. I don’t see learning more than one language as a negative concept. I think if you learn more than one language it will help you appreciate different cultures, heritages, and traditions that go hand in hand with the particular language. It is interesting to see that Johnson pushed the concept of bilingual education to help the Mexican American children learn English, which seems to be written in a positive matter in the statements above. According to Sanchez, it was also to teach Spanish to Mexican Americans. I think this is very IMPORTANT, because Mexican Americans should try to learn the Spanish language since the language is part of their history and is tied to various culture and traditional activities. I like that a lot of elementary schools in San Diego have a Spanish language curriculum and start teaching Spanish to children at a young age. It seems so easy for little children to learn a foreign language, so it is great that the school board members are making the Spanish language a high priority. I wonder if in the distant future there will be a time here when we must go back to learning an English language curriculum so that the English language is not forgotten?
