Will English-only never end? While traveling today I noticed a
story in USA Today which claims that one in seven US adults in the USA is:
"saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book"
Of course, many of these adults with low literacy are second-language speakers of English and may well be literate in their native language or another world language. But the survey didn't ask about that. As far as the
US Department of Education is concerned, literacy equals English language literacy, in spite of the fact that most bilingual people are more comfortable reading and writing in their first language. (Isn't that why we have translations?)
These attitudes continue to hamper bilingual education. As long as we continue to measure general skills such as literacy by their specific realization in English we will continue to suppress the development of a new generation of bilingual Alaskans.
