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Article: Education, Bilingual
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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EDUCATION, BILINGUAL
EDUCATION, BILINGUAL.
Bilingual education refers to an educational program in which both a native language and a second language are taught as subject matter and used as media of instruction for academic subjects. In the United States the tradition of public bilingual education began during the 1840s as a response to the many children who spoke German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages. As a result of the nativism of World War I and the adverse popular reaction to the large number of non-English-speaking immigrants entering the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, restrictive laws prohibiting instruction in languages ...