Aria Bilingualism- Rodriguez_ Hyperlinks

Over the years, bilingual children have suffered in the educational system due to the language barriers between the students, teachers, and parents. There has been many controversies over whether or not bilingual children have been at a disadvantage in the schools. Rodriguez talks about a family who has three children within the schools and have experienced the challenges that being a bilingual child has brought into many families. This family dealt the changes and the feeling of loss of identity when having to become cross-cultured and bring it into their home, their sacred place. This brings up the question of whether or not children should be entirely stripped from their native tongue, if it is not English, both in their homes and in the schools.

Families that have bilingual children and the dominant language at home is not English experience things that many of us who are English natives do not understand or even think twice about. When the school goes into the homes and strip them from the language that they know to be home, it is stripping them of their identity and individuality. As we can see the father in this stories becomes very introverted when speaking English and his family began to describe him as shy and timid, when in actuality the child points out that when their father is speaking in Spanish he is very bold, open and expressive. This would most likely be associated with the fact that the less you know about something, the less you can say, and in the father's case, how could he express how he feels in the English language if he is limited to the words, or phrases that he knows ? So, to English speakers, we tend to label them as introverted or disadvantaged, but in actuality they are limited to educational sources that they have in English.

As a whole, educators have to keep making a stand to promote keeping the individuality of being bilingual and understand that it is more of an advantage than it is a handicap to be able to communicate with others in more than one language. Individuality is something that schools have promoted over the years, so let us keep promoting that with-in the language barriers.