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Children may be wired to learn language at birth, but the process of learning one or more languages continues for many years.

The problem is not that children learn languages less when they reach school age, but that...

1.) Schools use a method of teaching language that is not appropriate for learning language

2.) Schools fall short of teaching for cultural enrichment

3.) Language is taught in schools as a subject, not as an active, cultural activity

4.) Our schools are focused on test scores and budget shortfalls, and fail to understand the needs of multi-language students

5.) Learning should be natural and fun, never "work" and never cold and academic

6.) Learning should be individual, not targeted to a group of 22 students

7.) Learning should be motivated, and focused upon individual experiences

8.) Learning should reflect in the internal world of the student

So, besides the change in the style of learning that occurs as the child becomes older, the Bilingual debate becomes confused by the issue of subject matter learning.

The problem is that the learning of language and the learning of educational content become confused in the minds of educators. These are separate issues...with separate solutions.

(Of course, schools believe that they can barely pay for a single solution, and reject any frills such as multiple learning opportunities for students.)

The two sides of this debate are that...

1.) Bilingual students would have to learn the mechanics of the second language

2.) Bilingual students would have to learn the ordinary subject/ content area material twice, once in their native language, and once again in English (They might also receive twice the homework. This places an unfair academic burden upon the Bilingal students.)

It is also a stretch of logic to think that students can generalize academic subjects, some students can (the verbally intelligent ones), but most students cannot. This means that an unfair burden, and unfair expectations, are placed upon Bilingual students. If you doubt this issue, just ask a Bilingual person about the vocabulary for any specialized academic subject, such as history, government, health, chemistry, physics, medicine, geology, geography, etc.

The ways that our schools teach these subjects is "vocabulary-based." Intelligent people may know and understand concepts, but may only have the vocabulary to describe those concepts in one language. But, not knowing the specialized vocabulary does not cause a hardship for students, except in our

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