April 4, 2025 • 41 mins
In 2018, Producer Jeanne Montalvo reported on the choices her parents made when raising her in a bilingual household. Five years later, Jeanne’s two children both command the Spanish language. But the oldest, Martin, was 2.5 years old at the start of the pandemic and never learned English. This came with a series of challenges as he entered the school system in New York. One daycare even suggested Martin was on the spectrum. In this follow up episode, Latino USA takes a deep dive into bilingual education history as Jeanne looks for solidarity in the ghosts of New York City’s past.
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This episode originally aired in 2023.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear Latino USA listener, President Donald Trump has signed an
executive order making English the official language of the United
States for the first time in almost two hundred and
fifty years. The order says it quote recognizes and celebrates
the long tradition of multi lingual American citizens who have
(00:21):
learned English and passed it to their children for generations
to come. More than sixty million people in the United
States speak a language other than English at home, which
Spanish being that other language for over forty million residents
of this country. At Latino USA, where I and many
(00:43):
members of our staff speak Spanish at home, we celebrate
bilingualism and we're proud to pass our mother language on
to our children. Which is why, today, dear listener, we
want to bring you a very fitting story that celebrates
the preservation of language and culture. Here's a story called
bilingual Is My Superpower. It originally aired in twenty twenty three.
(01:08):
I am in the studio with a very special guest
who I haven't seen in.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
A long time.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hello, Hi, Maria.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm Mardine. It's so good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
S see yose To Norie. Our very special guest is
the son of our producer Gini.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Montalvo say, let the t shirt, baby.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think I need to know what your t shirt says,
because it's really cool.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I'll read it for you. It says I'm bilingual. What's
your superpower?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I speak to languagees Spanish and English.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It is kind of like a superpower, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And guess what I'm by lingual too, Bud. So it
was back in twenty eighteen, Genie, that we did a
podcast that really looked at bilingualism and your family.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yes, you would have heard my son babbling at the time.
Martine was like seven months at that point. Last so cute.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And we talked about you and your brother, and we
talked about my kids, your kids, and we were talking
about language. Right, what is our first language when we
introduced another language? And so all right, here we are
five years later and I'm having full blown conversations with
your son in English and in Spanish. It's like adorable.
(02:44):
Which language do you like better? English or Spanish?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Spanish? Perro Quierro, I said, English is Spanish?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Losos? I think that's great. And guess what you can't? Yes?
And our decision. Last time you and I spoke, Maria
was one hundred percent Spanish at home, and so Martin did,
in fact, when in Spanish first, like me and your
kids and so many others borget espano.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Ismas bonito qu yota spico.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So the good news is he got the Spanish since
he was little, and that really is so fabulous. But
what else has happened in these past several years?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
We moved out of Queens to the Burbs and Martin
has a little sister, Syamrandi. Oh my god, I love that.
So is she speaking Spanish too correct? Here? She is
reading bluna? Oh? Yes, So we felt like this was
(03:50):
a big parenting win. They got the Spanish check But
plot twist from Martin. Something happened in March of twenty twenty,
right the pandemic, Yeah, exactly. Never in our wildest dreams
we have imagined that Martine would get stuck at home
with us with nothing but a window to a street
in Queen's. Martin was in a Spanish immersion program at
(04:11):
that time, so, along with zooms and FaceTime with the abuelos,
for all he knew then at two and a half,
the world operated in Spanish. And well, because of that,
it meant Martin actually never learned English.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
From Futuro Media and pr X. It's Latino Usa. I'm
marieno Hosa today. Bilingual is my superpower. GINI is going
to pick up the story from here.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Is normal. My husband at n Esto and I have
always spoken Spanish to each other. He immigrated from Peru
in two thousand and nine, and I'm the child of
Dominican parents, so we just knew we would speak Spanish
to our kids. But nothing could have prepared us for
(05:12):
what our decision would mean amongst a pandemic and lockdown.
And We're not the only ones. So many children that
were forced to stay home for the past three years
were impacted by the loss of in person instruction. Kids
who were making progress and programs for English Language learners
as it's called in New York were now suddenly thrust
into virtual learning, back with their home language with little
(05:35):
to no support. In our case, moving to the urbs
with a newborn and a three year old brought its
own challenges, but in twenty twenty one, we decided it
was time to get Mutting out of the house. He
needed to socialize with other children, and at this point
he was three and a half, so kindergarten was on
the horizon. I personally never intended for Muchding to need
(05:56):
bilingual education or any English support. I was more prepared
for the day I would have to force him to
keep speaking Spanish. It was very important to me, a
child of immigrants with a bilingual upbringing, that he learned
English before kindergarten. I went through the public school system
in the South. I didn't take any tests, I didn't
(06:16):
have bilingual education, but I knew English by the time
I got to kindergarten because of where we lived. So
I just wanted him to be solid before he got there.
So we did what people have been doing for decades.
We put him in daycare in English. Two weeks after
starting full time, we got called to a meeting. You guys,
(06:38):
educators have The director began to share their concern Medding
repeats with the staff. Says, and we don't see that
in his age, he's acting out, he's hitting people, and
that he hums. Though that's my husband at NISTO incredibly
surprised that humming is an issue because we're both musicians
(06:58):
and that for my being at least the humming seemed
to be a product of that. But the humming in
conjunction with the other behavior, the pushing, the hitting, the repetition.
The staff was suggesting that maybe he was on the
spectrum all the time.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
We'll do as well as pictorum.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Matting has always had issues with change. He takes longer
to adapt to things. In this case, we moved, he
had a new sister, and he's in a new daycare
where he doesn't speak the language. We had explicitly told
this daycare when we first approached the school that Martin
did not speak English. They assured us that they were
equipped to handle bilingual children. And look, we would be
(07:40):
naive to say that Matting is perfect. He can be
a handful, but we knew in our hearts Martin wasn't
on the spectrum because before the pandemic he had been
in a Spanish immersion school and did fine. At the
same time, we've never been opposed to having our son evaluated.
We were in constant communication with our pediatricians, but things
(08:00):
pediatrician and queens even told us he'd been receiving calls
like this almost weekly because of the return to in
person care. He said, imagine, it's like you dropped your
kid in a daycare in China, it's like that drastic
of a change. He's been home for an entire year.
He does not know how to socialize. He's not seen
another kid at his age for an entire year. None
(08:24):
of the other kids were bilingual, and honestly, no two
toddlers are going to react the same way to things.
So the daycare solution was to put us on a
behavioral plan, which was a plan to put specific techniques
in place and monitor progress. Yet they didn't give us
time to show progress because we were traveling for the
bulk of the time frame. Even though they knew that,
(08:45):
they said they could no longer work with us after
a certain date. In essence, they wanted a three year
old to show progress in one week. We knew this
wouldn't work. Thus it just became clear they didn't want
to help him and they didn't want us there. We
still had a full year and a half before we
entered the public school system, which at that point I
believed had systems in place to help him. But what
(09:08):
were we supposed to do until then? When my thing
was born, I didn't know that this journey would be
so hard, But as I've found with many parenting decisions.
It would require a lot of introspection. Am I doing
the right thing for my child? Is this happening because
he can't speak English? Is my decision going to affect
(09:29):
him negatively? Is there actually something wrong with him and
maybe two languages are holding him back? And so I
at least left the meeting feeling defeated, stressed, and worried
about what was next. I couldn't believe this was twenty
twenty one and we were still in multicultural New York.
(09:50):
This wasn't supposed to happen here. New York is supposed
to be different. So I started to look for answers
for me. That meant looking through history. And it all
started when I heard an episode of The Bowery Boys
podcast on the New Yorrekan migration.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Ominously, the New York State Chamber of Commerce took aim
at Puerto Rican children, commissioning intelligence tests, then determining that
Puerto Rican children were sub normal and would quote deteriorate
standards already so seriously impaired by mass immigration of the
lowest levels of populations of many nations unquote.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What struck me was that these children were given tests
in a language they could barely speak, and because they
didn't perform well on the tests, they were labeled subnormal.
Here I was, nearly a century later, being told there
was something wrong with our child simply because of a
language barrier, and he was on the verge of being
kicked out because of it. The study and its ripple
(10:56):
effects I learned thereafter became my security blanket, and so
I continued deeper into Spanish speaking New York and bilingual
education history, hoping that somewhere in that history was the
answer to how to properly teach your kiddle language.
Speaker 7 (11:11):
My parents came from Puerto Rico, going into the nineteen thirties.
They married in nineteen thirty five, and I was born
the year after.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Virginia Sanchez Corole is Professor Emerita at the Department of
Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, Virginia entered
the school system a couple of years after the study
was published.
Speaker 7 (11:34):
We all spoke Spanish. The school was the place where
you were suddenly introduced to English.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
There was validation. Even almost one hundred years ago, people
were dropping their kids in school to learn English. So
we had done nothing wrong as parents back then and
today these communities easily thrived and functioned fully in Spanish.
If you know a bit about the history of New
York's you'll know that the city has been home to
(12:02):
waves of immigration from all over the globe, German, Irish, Italian,
Eastern European, you name it. They all passed through Ellis Island,
and in the late nineteen twenties, through the Great Depression,
the city also received Spanish speaking residents, namely from Puerto Rico.
So receiving people who speak different languages is nothing new
for the city, and yet at the same time, psychological
(12:26):
tests were accepted tools for improving the educational process.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
IQ tests were geared too an American ideal, and for
kids that were coming from different parts of the world,
they did not recognize elements of American culture that might
appear on the test.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
The tests were biased because you could score incorrectly on
a question for something you may have never seen in
your life, and you may also not even speak the language.
Speaker 7 (12:57):
You have to look at the atmosphere and the ambiance
which these people are operating. You have to factor that
into whatever tests are being given to students and schools.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Intelligence tests have been used in very negative ways against
groups of people.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Doctor Ada Nevades Latore is Associate professor and Chair of
the Curriculum and Teaching Division at Fortum's Graduate School of Education.
Her research focuses on multi lingual education to.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
Keep them oppressed, to deny opportunities to grow and to develop,
and to really enact the promise of being individuals that
can contribute to this society.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
The US enacted a law to limit immigration in those
early decades, but Puerto Ricans were US citizens, and so
this country was going to find another way to make
their case for limiting entry to this group of people,
like this study that caught my attention on the Bowery
Boys podcast. Nineteen thirty five, a Special Committee on Immigration
(14:06):
and Naturalization published its reaction and results to a study
done on Puerto Rican children from the previous year. It
gave IQ test to over two hundred children at one
specific school in Spanish Harlem. The researchers intended to give
a non verbal test since they knew language would be
a factor, but for some one hundred children, they use
the verbal test because it was allegedly more accurate.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
Any verbal tests or even non verbal tests given to
non speakers of the language of a test becomes a
language test, not an intelligence test. If students do not
understand what's being asked for them to answer, then you're
not testing intelligence. What you're testing is language proficiency, because
(14:52):
before they can do the task, they have to understand
the language.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The IQ tests were an appendix and a larger study
dealing with immigration control. The committee in the nineteen thirties
was looking to prove that Puerto Rico was not sending
its best, they were bringing crime. It reminded me a
bit of the rhetoric we've been hearing today. I started
to zoom out a bit and reflect on what all
this meant. These tests, like I said, were designed to
(15:21):
set the students up for failure. As a parent, it's
disappointing to hear that whatever agenda these people had, they
decided the best way to make their case was through children,
children who want to learn and grow. And never did
anything to these people except exist exist in Spanish. Despite
(15:43):
the obvious issues with the study itself, the final blanket
statement was that these Spanish speaking students were inferior, they
were below their uspers, and they should not be allowed
entry to the United States. And like we heard earlier,
they don't want them to quote to tear or eight
standards already impaired by mass immigration. Here's Virginia again.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
The adjustment issues became prominent in the school system because
the school system had to find a way to deal
with this influx of new students.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
When Virginia entered the school system in the early forties,
there was no bilingual education. Then we knew we had
to assimilate.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
It was kind of a hidden way of telling you
that the language and the culture that you were born
into and that the language as you spoke was inferior.
You had to get rid of it. That was the
only way that you were going to succeed.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
The kids who couldn't assimilate, or didn't test well on
the IQ test, or simply didn't do well in the
classroom because of language.
Speaker 7 (16:48):
Teachers began to recommend that these kids who had a
language issue would be put into remediation classes.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Virginia told me remediation classes for what we would consider
special education today. While special education classes were a needed
resource for many children, it also became a funnel point
for children deemed problematic or simply those who needed better
English instruction, and the teacher suggested it because it was
easier because it was the only thing they knew to do.
(17:22):
Doctor Latore, again, they do.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Not understand acquisition of a language other than English. They
take hold of the first thing or the explanation that
is closest to them, rather than continue to investigate.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And so we've arrived at this idea that instead of
considering language or why a child may be having difficulty,
we jump to the conclusion that a child needs special education,
rather than try to meet this child where they are
and dig to find out what is the issue at hand.
This sadly starts to sound familiar with what we were
(18:02):
going through with Martin. He wasn't like this before, you know,
and then he didn't have him until he started coming here.
So I don't really know what to tell you. Our
original daycare called us on the Monday after our meeting
to pick up Martin because they couldn't take care of
him that day. We don't know what we talk from about.
(18:27):
After it became clear that they were not a good
fit for us, we decided to pull Martin from the program.
Here we are the day after Arnesta and I went
in and gave the director a piece of our mind.
Instead of this being a devastating moment, we were confident.
We had spoken to his doctors and educational psychologists. The
(18:49):
consensus was, in fact, that Martin was acting out because
he couldn't communicate with the other children, and this behavior
was how he communicated. It wasn't right, but he didn't
know otherwise. We knew that Martin's behavior wasn't a reflection
of his ability to learn or his intelligence. Intelligence isn't
(19:11):
based on the ability to speak English. Kind of like
Sophia Ergara said in Modern Family.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You know how frustrating it is to have to translate
everything in my head before I say it?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?
Deciding to pull Martin from his daycare was still scary,
but it was the only option for us. We no
longer felt comfortable taking our son there, But here we were.
We still needed childcare and Martin still needed to learn English.
(19:47):
Was there a light at the end of the tunnel
for us and the kids? In my history? Lesson? Coming
up on that?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know us say, how does New York's history help
Genie navigate the school system? As Martine embraces English as
a new language, stay with us not Bayes, Hey, We're back,
(20:31):
and Before the Break, producer Genie Montalbo explained the unexpected
challenges her son Martine faced as a Spanish speaking child
entering school in New York City. To better navigate the system,
Genie went on a trip through history and was surprised
by what she found.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
She's going to pick up the story from here. I
don't know about the rest of you bilingual folks, but
for me, it's very weird to speak Spanish or English
to specific people. Why I can't speak English to my
husband and I can't speak Spanish to my brother, and
so the same thing now happens with my kids. It's
(21:09):
weird for me to speak in anything but Spanish to
them and English.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
No perun school is in English, lacasa is.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So it was no surprise to me the day that
I sat down to try to help Martin with his
homework that he had some strong feelings.
Speaker 8 (21:27):
No an englis simbri alo espanol aki.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
He's become mega ultraspecific about when and where we speak
either language, almost like the one parent, one language technique
to teach your child the language. Martin now associates Spanish
with home and English with school. He's even at the
extreme that he won't let us watch movies in English.
I grew up on English language content. You couldn't change
(21:55):
the language on your streaming device. I have had to
rewatch every single movie and Disney movie in Spanish. All
I want to do is seeing Tomorrow from Annie Mamma
Ryana Yera, but I've had to relearn it all in Spanish.
(22:16):
This process has been hard for me as well, because
at some point in my life the English took over
and became more dominant. I actively chose Spanish on a
daily basis. Anyone who's flipped languages knows this can be exhausting,
but I do it because I want to keep my
own fluency and because I want my kids to be solid.
Like I said, I'm preparing myself for that day they
(22:38):
say to me, I don't want to speak Spanish because
I'm sure that day will come, and if it does,
it's okay. But until then this will all be good
for me and us. But things vocabulary in Spanish is
often better than mine. That day we were at the
kitchen table. He told me English was only for school,
(22:59):
so I asked him how he was going to learn
to read.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
In las cuela, No aki solo no ipa ig cordita
solon in ascueila.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Mom and dad and sister, we're not allowed to speak
English at home, and I guess that's how we'll operate
until we decide otherwise. I had a lot of mom
guilt surrounding dropping my thing into the deep end of
the pool. It made everything that was going on in
the daycare worse because on some level it felt like
we had chosen that for him, and that's why he
(23:38):
was having a hard time. My only consolation was that
a century of people I was learning about had done
exactly that, and they were all functioning adults. It made
me feel less alone in this journey. But how did
we get there? What happened after that infamous study In
the thirties, I thought English was taught separately, like some
(24:02):
of the transitional bilingual ED classes today. That model was
something I learned was used a lot in the fifties
and the sixties. The thinking was if you taught Spanish
speaking students English first, then you could move them into
the classroom. Doctor Latore, Again.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
When you do that, students are not learning about science,
mass social studies.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How again are we acquiring language when you separate it
from classroom content. Even the language you use at home
is different when you use it at school, kind of
like how Martin compartmentalized language spoken at home versus school.
And so in the past, when those kids returned to
the classroom because now they supposedly knew English, they.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Were quiet again. Why because they had not learned in
that language classroom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And because the teachers weren't actually trained in how language develops.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Many teachers saw, but wait a second. This child knows
English because he can communicate perfectly with me, but he
cannot learn math. He's behind in science, he cannot write
a composition in English language arts. So therefore there must
(25:16):
be something wrong with their brain.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Even kids who speak one language can have issues in
the classroom. Academic language is tough. I lost one of
the top spots in the spelling Bee in fourth grade
because of the word desecrete. Who uses that in a
sentence every day?
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Just because they were thrown into an English speaking classroom,
that doesn't mean that on their own, those students were
being supported to learn English.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
And we know for a fact that many of.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Those students decided to leave school. These students were intelligent
and say, wait a second, I'm wasting my time in
a classroom that number one, I do not understand. Number two,
the teacher doesn't seem to care about me to spend
time to learn who I am, where I come from,
(26:08):
and what my learning needs are. Why am in here
if I can be out there supporting my family with
a job.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
This was all happening at a time when the Puerto
Rican population in New York City had increased by twelve times,
with the press claiming these students allegedly continue to overcrowd
and that their delinquents who are deteriorating the public school system.
In certain outlets, it was labeled the Puerto Rican problem Virginia.
Speaker 7 (26:40):
Again, this idea of a Puerto Rican problem took into
account the fact that kids were scoring poorly on school exams,
but there were no resources to help.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
But during this decade, when the tensions with Puerto Ricans
in the city were at its height, is where I
start to see some changes in advocacy start to pop up.
The Board of Education felt it was time to assess
what was in place. Since there wasn't a proper way
to test intelligence in non English speakers, so schools couldn't
create or improve programs, and so they started something called
(27:14):
the Puerto Rican Study in nineteen fifty three. It was
a major investigation. The study developed techniques, teaching materials, detailed
adding positions. Even the language used in this study is
vastly different from the rhetoric that was being spread in
the media. Here's a quote from the director of the study,
(27:34):
doctor J. K. Morrison, read by our senior production manager,
Mike Sargent. We see them not.
Speaker 9 (27:42):
As problems, not as statistics, but as tiny individuals, each
in his own way, working towards adjustment in a culture
new and strange.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Here it was the bones of bilingual education mapped out.
When the study was released in nineteen fifty nine. It
cost one million dollars in the nineteen fifties, that's like
twelve million today. Surely this all led to the basis
of what we have today. Except all this work never
(28:16):
really went anywhere. And I knew that because the New
York Board of Education would be sued by a Puerto
Rican youth organization in the seventies. The funny thing when
you learn about history is you know how it ends,
no matter how many times you watch Titanic in my case,
thirteen the ship will always sink. So when I eventually
(28:40):
went to the municipal building downtown to review all these materials,
I was a little shocked. How do you spend so
much money on developing something to help a group of
people and then don't put it into practice? And the
answer to that brings us back to understanding our surroundings
so called Puerto Rican problem, to quote the study's next steps.
(29:05):
A study, however, good never solves problems. At best, it
finds solutions that will work. To put the proposals into
effective operation in all schools is a major undertaking the problem.
Segregation still ruled the schools. When I looked at the
(29:26):
bigger picture, the surroundings, the way the Puerto Rican children
were taught, and the study, it all started to make sense,
especially as I learned how changes were and are implemented
within the school system. One is money to implement the
new materials, the other is proper staffing to teach it.
There needs to be assessments to keep the schools honest,
(29:49):
and finally, the parents they we need to be involved.
If any of those pieces aren't working, then the system
won't work. And this still goes for today, I found
myself feeling naive and saddened to finally understand that as
long as the structural racism and oppression of a people exist,
(30:13):
that will permeate into the school system. Because the answer
to why that study wasn't fully put into place is
because of how the vast majority of the city treated
a specific group of people. Whoever makes the call decides
how money and programs are implemented or if they're even
used at all, kind of like what's happening across the
(30:34):
country in Florida and Texas. The people in charge decide
they don't want African American studies and diversity, equity and
inclusion programs, so they ban them because of their own agenda.
But in New York, to me anyway, it always felt
like this multicultural bubble. We never expected to deal with
someone questioning our bilingualism here. So once I fully understood
(30:59):
why the study was wasn't put into place, I wanted
to know how we got from the study to a
lawsuit and how that affected the schools because we do
have bilingual education today, and right around the Civil rights movement,
things start to pick up the pace. Here's Virginia Sanchez
Corol again.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
Puerto Rican and Black students begin to take over the colleges,
asking for courses, not asking, demanding what was their right
to courses about their experience? They wanted to see themselves
in the curriculum.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
One woman in particular really took the fight for education
equality and cultural preservation to a new level, Doctor Antonio Panoja.
Here she is speaking in a documentary from two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
We started to learn from the youth what was happening
to them in the schools.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Doctor Pantoja was a Puerto Rican organizer and activist who
arrived in New York City in nineteen forty four. She
created Aspeeda in the early sixties, which in Spanish means
to aspire. Aspeeda was formed as a place for Puerto
Rican kids to receive support outside of the classroom. The
organization still exists today for all people coming from a
(32:15):
Latine background. Doctor Pantoha believed that because of the language barrier,
the children were not learning anything and they would leave school.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
There's a lot that says that they will take you
to jail if you don't take your children to school.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like we've been hearing, the dropout rate had been a
problem for decades, and it was due in part to
failed support from the public school system. That's turning your own.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Okay, if there's a lot of that says that I
have to take my children to school, then I can
accuse you as an institution where I have brought my
children and you don't teach them.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Doctor Pantoja brought the problem to the newly founded Puerto
Rican Legal Defense Fund, and in nineteen seventy two they
did in fact sue the state in what's known as
Aspeeda versus Board of Education. The New York Board of
Education settled and created what's called a consent decree, meaning
the schools would have to provide special language assistance to
children who did not speak English. This lawsuit was one
(33:13):
of many in the nineteen seventies around the country that
led to national legislation. It did in fact lead to
change and built the foundation of what we know today
is bilingual education. As I went farther and farther down
the rabbit hole, I often wondered, what does Puerto Rico
(33:34):
have to do with my Dominican American southern upbringing and
my now Domini and Mary Peruvian children sharing a common language?
Meant Puerto Ricans were fighting for all the Spanish speakers
in the state because New York would eventually receive Dominican
immigrants people from Mexico, Central and South America. After English,
(33:55):
Spanish is the most common language spoken in this region,
and the people who fought for bilingual education created a
ripple effect that is bigger than Spanish speakers. Virginia shares
the time she gave a talk.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
This guy in the back of the auditorium, tall, very tall, blonde,
raises his hand to make a comment, and he says, well,
bilingual education was the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I'm thinking, I know he was Latino. He says,
when I came from Russia, if I had not had
(34:32):
bilingual program to get into I would not be doing
the things that I'm doing today.
Speaker 9 (34:38):
And that was like, that's right.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
Bilingual education doesn't only mean Spanish English. It's now a
tool for learning and bringing children into school systems that
we never had before.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Currently, New York States public schools boast a population of
over two hundred and sixty thousand students who speak over
two hundred languages. From the web, it says all teachers
must be skilled in how to support English language learners
as they acquire content knowledge while also progressing towards English
(35:15):
language proficiency. But in early education, you the parent should
always be on the lookout because the teaching requirements are different.
While your toddler's teacher may be good at taking care
of a three year old, they may not be trained
in working with bilingual children. And well, we've all heard
(35:35):
how that can go. In fall of twenty twenty two,
Matting finally entered the public school system. He was assessed
for a language. Leading up to that, because we filled
out a form that said we had another home language, I.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Get a lot of things, I get a talk test.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Marting was placed in NL or English has a new
language because he tested as transitioning or in the middle,
which gives him one hundred and eighty minutes per week
of support. Bilingual education works in a variety of ways
in New York State today, and because we're not in
a dual language district, Mutting was assigned an NL teacher
who comes into the classroom and along with the classroom teacher,
(36:20):
they work as code teachers. Matting has now been in
a classroom environment that has really supported his English language
development for only about a year.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Now I really know how to speak to you of them,
and who.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Helped you with that? The teacher, mister m Yeah, the
school year just ended. When we started our journey into
public schools, Mudding's NL teacher told us that we have
to continue the home language. He said, quote the better
Mutting spoke Spanish, the better he would speak English. All
(36:54):
of the stress that I had felt for the past
year slowly started to melt away. Knew he was in
a place that was going to support him. I now
know that it was easier for someone to say that
there was something wrong with him than to really assess
why he was acting that way. And he did improve
immensely once we moved him to a new program with love,
(37:15):
care and dedication from both educators and us. Mating is
not going to be the same as any other child,
and we knew that, and so we fought for him.
This is cliche, but children are actually like sponges. Through
this journey, I've learned you have to see the promise
(37:36):
in every child. Kids will learn Intelligence exists in many
different forms. It's not just one construct. Frederick Douglass said,
power concedes nothing without a demand as parents, we have
to individually advocate for our own kids. That's the only
piece of the puzzle we have control over. We know
(37:57):
them better than anyone because as we've seen, until the
world is more accepting of everyone, there is still work
to be done, and if you aren't comfortable in English,
there is support. Schools and the city have resources. Bi
Lingual education as it stands today exists because people throughout
history fought for it. To them, I say, go ask yes,
(38:25):
you know, and you know what? And all of this
questioning how Martine is making out after the pandemic. My
two year old is in daycare in English now. I
didn't even realize that she's speaking English in school on
Spanish at home.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
Wash my hands.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, because I only hear her speak Spanish. It never
occurred to me how quickly she would start code switching.
Like my brother said when I reported on this in
twenty eighteen, ling is one of the best gifts you
can pass on to your child. There's more places to visit, books,
(39:05):
to read, movies, to see more of the world to absorb.
Generations of us have done it like my parents did
with me, and my husband and I are succeeding with
our own kids.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Bilingualism really is a superpower. This episode was produced by
(40:04):
Gini Montalbo. It was edited by Mark Vagan. It was
mixed by Stephanie Lebau and Julia Caruso. The Latino USA
team also includes Roxanna guire, Felicia Dominguez, Fernando Chavari, Jessica Ellis,
Victoria Strada, Dominiquin Estrosa, Renaldo Leos Junior, Luis Luna Marta Martinez,
JJ Crubin, Tasha Sandoval and Nancy Trujillo, Beenille, Ramidez, Marlon Bishop,
(40:29):
Maria Garcia and myself are co executive producers and I'm
your host, Marino Rossa. Join us again on our next episode.
In the meantime, look for us on all of our
social media. I'll see you on Instagram. Evyes, Ciao.
Speaker 10 (40:46):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the John Dee and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the
Heis and Simon's Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More
at hsfoundation dot org.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Mon No Messy Up
Dear Latino USA listener, President Donald Trump has signed an
executive order making English the official language of the United
States for the first time in almost two hundred and
fifty years. The order says it quote recognizes and celebrates
the long tradition of multi lingual American citizens who have
(00:21):
learned English and passed it to their children for generations
to come. More than sixty million people in the United
States speak a language other than English at home, which
Spanish being that other language for over forty million residents
of this country. At Latino USA, where I and many
(00:43):
members of our staff speak Spanish at home, we celebrate
bilingualism and we're proud to pass our mother language on
to our children. Which is why, today, dear listener, we
want to bring you a very fitting story that celebrates
the preservation of language and culture. Here's a story called
bilingual Is My Superpower. It originally aired in twenty twenty three.
(01:08):
I am in the studio with a very special guest
who I haven't seen in.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
A long time.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hello, Hi, Maria.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I'm Mardine. It's so good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
S see yose To Norie. Our very special guest is
the son of our producer Gini.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Montalvo say, let the t shirt, baby.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think I need to know what your t shirt says,
because it's really cool.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I'll read it for you. It says I'm bilingual. What's
your superpower?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I speak to languagees Spanish and English.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
It is kind of like a superpower, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And guess what I'm by lingual too, Bud. So it
was back in twenty eighteen, Genie, that we did a
podcast that really looked at bilingualism and your family.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yes, you would have heard my son babbling at the time.
Martine was like seven months at that point. Last so cute.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And we talked about you and your brother, and we
talked about my kids, your kids, and we were talking
about language. Right, what is our first language when we
introduced another language? And so all right, here we are
five years later and I'm having full blown conversations with
your son in English and in Spanish. It's like adorable.
(02:44):
Which language do you like better? English or Spanish?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Spanish? Perro Quierro, I said, English is Spanish?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Losos? I think that's great. And guess what you can't? Yes?
And our decision. Last time you and I spoke, Maria
was one hundred percent Spanish at home, and so Martin did,
in fact, when in Spanish first, like me and your
kids and so many others borget espano.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Ismas bonito qu yota spico.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So the good news is he got the Spanish since
he was little, and that really is so fabulous. But
what else has happened in these past several years?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
We moved out of Queens to the Burbs and Martin
has a little sister, Syamrandi. Oh my god, I love that.
So is she speaking Spanish too correct? Here? She is
reading bluna? Oh? Yes, So we felt like this was
(03:50):
a big parenting win. They got the Spanish check But
plot twist from Martin. Something happened in March of twenty twenty,
right the pandemic, Yeah, exactly. Never in our wildest dreams
we have imagined that Martine would get stuck at home
with us with nothing but a window to a street
in Queen's. Martin was in a Spanish immersion program at
(04:11):
that time, so, along with zooms and FaceTime with the abuelos,
for all he knew then at two and a half,
the world operated in Spanish. And well, because of that,
it meant Martin actually never learned English.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
From Futuro Media and pr X. It's Latino Usa. I'm
marieno Hosa today. Bilingual is my superpower. GINI is going
to pick up the story from here.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Is normal. My husband at n Esto and I have
always spoken Spanish to each other. He immigrated from Peru
in two thousand and nine, and I'm the child of
Dominican parents, so we just knew we would speak Spanish
to our kids. But nothing could have prepared us for
(05:12):
what our decision would mean amongst a pandemic and lockdown.
And We're not the only ones. So many children that
were forced to stay home for the past three years
were impacted by the loss of in person instruction. Kids
who were making progress and programs for English Language learners
as it's called in New York were now suddenly thrust
into virtual learning, back with their home language with little
(05:35):
to no support. In our case, moving to the urbs
with a newborn and a three year old brought its
own challenges, but in twenty twenty one, we decided it
was time to get Mutting out of the house. He
needed to socialize with other children, and at this point
he was three and a half, so kindergarten was on
the horizon. I personally never intended for Muchding to need
(05:56):
bilingual education or any English support. I was more prepared
for the day I would have to force him to
keep speaking Spanish. It was very important to me, a
child of immigrants with a bilingual upbringing, that he learned
English before kindergarten. I went through the public school system
in the South. I didn't take any tests, I didn't
(06:16):
have bilingual education, but I knew English by the time
I got to kindergarten because of where we lived. So
I just wanted him to be solid before he got there.
So we did what people have been doing for decades.
We put him in daycare in English. Two weeks after
starting full time, we got called to a meeting. You guys,
(06:38):
educators have The director began to share their concern Medding
repeats with the staff. Says, and we don't see that
in his age, he's acting out, he's hitting people, and
that he hums. Though that's my husband at NISTO incredibly
surprised that humming is an issue because we're both musicians
(06:58):
and that for my being at least the humming seemed
to be a product of that. But the humming in
conjunction with the other behavior, the pushing, the hitting, the repetition.
The staff was suggesting that maybe he was on the
spectrum all the time.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
We'll do as well as pictorum.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Matting has always had issues with change. He takes longer
to adapt to things. In this case, we moved, he
had a new sister, and he's in a new daycare
where he doesn't speak the language. We had explicitly told
this daycare when we first approached the school that Martin
did not speak English. They assured us that they were
equipped to handle bilingual children. And look, we would be
(07:40):
naive to say that Matting is perfect. He can be
a handful, but we knew in our hearts Martin wasn't
on the spectrum because before the pandemic he had been
in a Spanish immersion school and did fine. At the
same time, we've never been opposed to having our son evaluated.
We were in constant communication with our pediatricians, but things
(08:00):
pediatrician and queens even told us he'd been receiving calls
like this almost weekly because of the return to in
person care. He said, imagine, it's like you dropped your
kid in a daycare in China, it's like that drastic
of a change. He's been home for an entire year.
He does not know how to socialize. He's not seen
another kid at his age for an entire year. None
(08:24):
of the other kids were bilingual, and honestly, no two
toddlers are going to react the same way to things.
So the daycare solution was to put us on a
behavioral plan, which was a plan to put specific techniques
in place and monitor progress. Yet they didn't give us
time to show progress because we were traveling for the
bulk of the time frame. Even though they knew that,
(08:45):
they said they could no longer work with us after
a certain date. In essence, they wanted a three year
old to show progress in one week. We knew this
wouldn't work. Thus it just became clear they didn't want
to help him and they didn't want us there. We
still had a full year and a half before we
entered the public school system, which at that point I
believed had systems in place to help him. But what
(09:08):
were we supposed to do until then? When my thing
was born, I didn't know that this journey would be
so hard, But as I've found with many parenting decisions.
It would require a lot of introspection. Am I doing
the right thing for my child? Is this happening because
he can't speak English? Is my decision going to affect
(09:29):
him negatively? Is there actually something wrong with him and
maybe two languages are holding him back? And so I
at least left the meeting feeling defeated, stressed, and worried
about what was next. I couldn't believe this was twenty
twenty one and we were still in multicultural New York.
(09:50):
This wasn't supposed to happen here. New York is supposed
to be different. So I started to look for answers
for me. That meant looking through history. And it all
started when I heard an episode of The Bowery Boys
podcast on the New Yorrekan migration.
Speaker 6 (10:11):
Ominously, the New York State Chamber of Commerce took aim
at Puerto Rican children, commissioning intelligence tests, then determining that
Puerto Rican children were sub normal and would quote deteriorate
standards already so seriously impaired by mass immigration of the
lowest levels of populations of many nations unquote.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What struck me was that these children were given tests
in a language they could barely speak, and because they
didn't perform well on the tests, they were labeled subnormal.
Here I was, nearly a century later, being told there
was something wrong with our child simply because of a
language barrier, and he was on the verge of being
kicked out because of it. The study and its ripple
(10:56):
effects I learned thereafter became my security blanket, and so
I continued deeper into Spanish speaking New York and bilingual
education history, hoping that somewhere in that history was the
answer to how to properly teach your kiddle language.
Speaker 7 (11:11):
My parents came from Puerto Rico, going into the nineteen thirties.
They married in nineteen thirty five, and I was born
the year after.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Virginia Sanchez Corole is Professor Emerita at the Department of
Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, Virginia entered
the school system a couple of years after the study
was published.
Speaker 7 (11:34):
We all spoke Spanish. The school was the place where
you were suddenly introduced to English.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
There was validation. Even almost one hundred years ago, people
were dropping their kids in school to learn English. So
we had done nothing wrong as parents back then and
today these communities easily thrived and functioned fully in Spanish.
If you know a bit about the history of New
York's you'll know that the city has been home to
(12:02):
waves of immigration from all over the globe, German, Irish, Italian,
Eastern European, you name it. They all passed through Ellis Island,
and in the late nineteen twenties, through the Great Depression,
the city also received Spanish speaking residents, namely from Puerto Rico.
So receiving people who speak different languages is nothing new
for the city, and yet at the same time, psychological
(12:26):
tests were accepted tools for improving the educational process.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
IQ tests were geared too an American ideal, and for
kids that were coming from different parts of the world,
they did not recognize elements of American culture that might
appear on the test.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
The tests were biased because you could score incorrectly on
a question for something you may have never seen in
your life, and you may also not even speak the language.
Speaker 7 (12:57):
You have to look at the atmosphere and the ambiance
which these people are operating. You have to factor that
into whatever tests are being given to students and schools.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
Intelligence tests have been used in very negative ways against
groups of people.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Doctor Ada Nevades Latore is Associate professor and Chair of
the Curriculum and Teaching Division at Fortum's Graduate School of Education.
Her research focuses on multi lingual education to.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
Keep them oppressed, to deny opportunities to grow and to develop,
and to really enact the promise of being individuals that
can contribute to this society.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
The US enacted a law to limit immigration in those
early decades, but Puerto Ricans were US citizens, and so
this country was going to find another way to make
their case for limiting entry to this group of people,
like this study that caught my attention on the Bowery
Boys podcast. Nineteen thirty five, a Special Committee on Immigration
(14:06):
and Naturalization published its reaction and results to a study
done on Puerto Rican children from the previous year. It
gave IQ test to over two hundred children at one
specific school in Spanish Harlem. The researchers intended to give
a non verbal test since they knew language would be
a factor, but for some one hundred children, they use
the verbal test because it was allegedly more accurate.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
Any verbal tests or even non verbal tests given to
non speakers of the language of a test becomes a
language test, not an intelligence test. If students do not
understand what's being asked for them to answer, then you're
not testing intelligence. What you're testing is language proficiency, because
(14:52):
before they can do the task, they have to understand
the language.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The IQ tests were an appendix and a larger study
dealing with immigration control. The committee in the nineteen thirties
was looking to prove that Puerto Rico was not sending
its best, they were bringing crime. It reminded me a
bit of the rhetoric we've been hearing today. I started
to zoom out a bit and reflect on what all
this meant. These tests, like I said, were designed to
(15:21):
set the students up for failure. As a parent, it's
disappointing to hear that whatever agenda these people had, they
decided the best way to make their case was through children,
children who want to learn and grow. And never did
anything to these people except exist exist in Spanish. Despite
(15:43):
the obvious issues with the study itself, the final blanket
statement was that these Spanish speaking students were inferior, they
were below their uspers, and they should not be allowed
entry to the United States. And like we heard earlier,
they don't want them to quote to tear or eight
standards already impaired by mass immigration. Here's Virginia again.
Speaker 7 (16:07):
The adjustment issues became prominent in the school system because
the school system had to find a way to deal
with this influx of new students.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
When Virginia entered the school system in the early forties,
there was no bilingual education. Then we knew we had
to assimilate.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
It was kind of a hidden way of telling you
that the language and the culture that you were born
into and that the language as you spoke was inferior.
You had to get rid of it. That was the
only way that you were going to succeed.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
The kids who couldn't assimilate, or didn't test well on
the IQ test, or simply didn't do well in the
classroom because of language.
Speaker 7 (16:48):
Teachers began to recommend that these kids who had a
language issue would be put into remediation classes.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Virginia told me remediation classes for what we would consider
special education today. While special education classes were a needed
resource for many children, it also became a funnel point
for children deemed problematic or simply those who needed better
English instruction, and the teacher suggested it because it was
easier because it was the only thing they knew to do.
(17:22):
Doctor Latore, again, they do.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Not understand acquisition of a language other than English. They
take hold of the first thing or the explanation that
is closest to them, rather than continue to investigate.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And so we've arrived at this idea that instead of
considering language or why a child may be having difficulty,
we jump to the conclusion that a child needs special education,
rather than try to meet this child where they are
and dig to find out what is the issue at hand.
This sadly starts to sound familiar with what we were
(18:02):
going through with Martin. He wasn't like this before, you know,
and then he didn't have him until he started coming here.
So I don't really know what to tell you. Our
original daycare called us on the Monday after our meeting
to pick up Martin because they couldn't take care of
him that day. We don't know what we talk from about.
(18:27):
After it became clear that they were not a good
fit for us, we decided to pull Martin from the program.
Here we are the day after Arnesta and I went
in and gave the director a piece of our mind.
Instead of this being a devastating moment, we were confident.
We had spoken to his doctors and educational psychologists. The
(18:49):
consensus was, in fact, that Martin was acting out because
he couldn't communicate with the other children, and this behavior
was how he communicated. It wasn't right, but he didn't
know otherwise. We knew that Martin's behavior wasn't a reflection
of his ability to learn or his intelligence. Intelligence isn't
(19:11):
based on the ability to speak English. Kind of like
Sophia Ergara said in Modern Family.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You know how frustrating it is to have to translate
everything in my head before I say it?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?
Deciding to pull Martin from his daycare was still scary,
but it was the only option for us. We no
longer felt comfortable taking our son there, But here we were.
We still needed childcare and Martin still needed to learn English.
(19:47):
Was there a light at the end of the tunnel
for us and the kids? In my history? Lesson? Coming
up on that?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
You know us say, how does New York's history help
Genie navigate the school system? As Martine embraces English as
a new language, stay with us not Bayes, Hey, We're back,
(20:31):
and Before the Break, producer Genie Montalbo explained the unexpected
challenges her son Martine faced as a Spanish speaking child
entering school in New York City. To better navigate the system,
Genie went on a trip through history and was surprised
by what she found.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
She's going to pick up the story from here. I
don't know about the rest of you bilingual folks, but
for me, it's very weird to speak Spanish or English
to specific people. Why I can't speak English to my
husband and I can't speak Spanish to my brother, and
so the same thing now happens with my kids. It's
(21:09):
weird for me to speak in anything but Spanish to
them and English.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
No perun school is in English, lacasa is.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So it was no surprise to me the day that
I sat down to try to help Martin with his
homework that he had some strong feelings.
Speaker 8 (21:27):
No an englis simbri alo espanol aki.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
He's become mega ultraspecific about when and where we speak
either language, almost like the one parent, one language technique
to teach your child the language. Martin now associates Spanish
with home and English with school. He's even at the
extreme that he won't let us watch movies in English.
I grew up on English language content. You couldn't change
(21:55):
the language on your streaming device. I have had to
rewatch every single movie and Disney movie in Spanish. All
I want to do is seeing Tomorrow from Annie Mamma
Ryana Yera, but I've had to relearn it all in Spanish.
(22:16):
This process has been hard for me as well, because
at some point in my life the English took over
and became more dominant. I actively chose Spanish on a
daily basis. Anyone who's flipped languages knows this can be exhausting,
but I do it because I want to keep my
own fluency and because I want my kids to be solid.
Like I said, I'm preparing myself for that day they
(22:38):
say to me, I don't want to speak Spanish because
I'm sure that day will come, and if it does,
it's okay. But until then this will all be good
for me and us. But things vocabulary in Spanish is
often better than mine. That day we were at the
kitchen table. He told me English was only for school,
(22:59):
so I asked him how he was going to learn
to read.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
In las cuela, No aki solo no ipa ig cordita
solon in ascueila.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Mom and dad and sister, we're not allowed to speak
English at home, and I guess that's how we'll operate
until we decide otherwise. I had a lot of mom
guilt surrounding dropping my thing into the deep end of
the pool. It made everything that was going on in
the daycare worse because on some level it felt like
we had chosen that for him, and that's why he
(23:38):
was having a hard time. My only consolation was that
a century of people I was learning about had done
exactly that, and they were all functioning adults. It made
me feel less alone in this journey. But how did
we get there? What happened after that infamous study In
the thirties, I thought English was taught separately, like some
(24:02):
of the transitional bilingual ED classes today. That model was
something I learned was used a lot in the fifties
and the sixties. The thinking was if you taught Spanish
speaking students English first, then you could move them into
the classroom. Doctor Latore, Again.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
When you do that, students are not learning about science,
mass social studies.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How again are we acquiring language when you separate it
from classroom content. Even the language you use at home
is different when you use it at school, kind of
like how Martin compartmentalized language spoken at home versus school.
And so in the past, when those kids returned to
the classroom because now they supposedly knew English, they.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Were quiet again. Why because they had not learned in
that language classroom.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And because the teachers weren't actually trained in how language develops.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Many teachers saw, but wait a second. This child knows
English because he can communicate perfectly with me, but he
cannot learn math. He's behind in science, he cannot write
a composition in English language arts. So therefore there must
(25:16):
be something wrong with their brain.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Even kids who speak one language can have issues in
the classroom. Academic language is tough. I lost one of
the top spots in the spelling Bee in fourth grade
because of the word desecrete. Who uses that in a
sentence every day?
Speaker 5 (25:35):
Just because they were thrown into an English speaking classroom,
that doesn't mean that on their own, those students were
being supported to learn English.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
And we know for a fact that many of.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Those students decided to leave school. These students were intelligent
and say, wait a second, I'm wasting my time in
a classroom that number one, I do not understand. Number two,
the teacher doesn't seem to care about me to spend
time to learn who I am, where I come from,
(26:08):
and what my learning needs are. Why am in here
if I can be out there supporting my family with
a job.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
This was all happening at a time when the Puerto
Rican population in New York City had increased by twelve times,
with the press claiming these students allegedly continue to overcrowd
and that their delinquents who are deteriorating the public school system.
In certain outlets, it was labeled the Puerto Rican problem Virginia.
Speaker 7 (26:40):
Again, this idea of a Puerto Rican problem took into
account the fact that kids were scoring poorly on school exams,
but there were no resources to help.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
But during this decade, when the tensions with Puerto Ricans
in the city were at its height, is where I
start to see some changes in advocacy start to pop up.
The Board of Education felt it was time to assess
what was in place. Since there wasn't a proper way
to test intelligence in non English speakers, so schools couldn't
create or improve programs, and so they started something called
(27:14):
the Puerto Rican Study in nineteen fifty three. It was
a major investigation. The study developed techniques, teaching materials, detailed
adding positions. Even the language used in this study is
vastly different from the rhetoric that was being spread in
the media. Here's a quote from the director of the study,
(27:34):
doctor J. K. Morrison, read by our senior production manager,
Mike Sargent. We see them not.
Speaker 9 (27:42):
As problems, not as statistics, but as tiny individuals, each
in his own way, working towards adjustment in a culture
new and strange.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Here it was the bones of bilingual education mapped out.
When the study was released in nineteen fifty nine. It
cost one million dollars in the nineteen fifties, that's like
twelve million today. Surely this all led to the basis
of what we have today. Except all this work never
(28:16):
really went anywhere. And I knew that because the New
York Board of Education would be sued by a Puerto
Rican youth organization in the seventies. The funny thing when
you learn about history is you know how it ends,
no matter how many times you watch Titanic in my case,
thirteen the ship will always sink. So when I eventually
(28:40):
went to the municipal building downtown to review all these materials,
I was a little shocked. How do you spend so
much money on developing something to help a group of
people and then don't put it into practice? And the
answer to that brings us back to understanding our surroundings
so called Puerto Rican problem, to quote the study's next steps.
(29:05):
A study, however, good never solves problems. At best, it
finds solutions that will work. To put the proposals into
effective operation in all schools is a major undertaking the problem.
Segregation still ruled the schools. When I looked at the
(29:26):
bigger picture, the surroundings, the way the Puerto Rican children
were taught, and the study, it all started to make sense,
especially as I learned how changes were and are implemented
within the school system. One is money to implement the
new materials, the other is proper staffing to teach it.
There needs to be assessments to keep the schools honest,
(29:49):
and finally, the parents they we need to be involved.
If any of those pieces aren't working, then the system
won't work. And this still goes for today, I found
myself feeling naive and saddened to finally understand that as
long as the structural racism and oppression of a people exist,
(30:13):
that will permeate into the school system. Because the answer
to why that study wasn't fully put into place is
because of how the vast majority of the city treated
a specific group of people. Whoever makes the call decides
how money and programs are implemented or if they're even
used at all, kind of like what's happening across the
(30:34):
country in Florida and Texas. The people in charge decide
they don't want African American studies and diversity, equity and
inclusion programs, so they ban them because of their own agenda.
But in New York, to me anyway, it always felt
like this multicultural bubble. We never expected to deal with
someone questioning our bilingualism here. So once I fully understood
(30:59):
why the study was wasn't put into place, I wanted
to know how we got from the study to a
lawsuit and how that affected the schools because we do
have bilingual education today, and right around the Civil rights movement,
things start to pick up the pace. Here's Virginia Sanchez
Corol again.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
Puerto Rican and Black students begin to take over the colleges,
asking for courses, not asking, demanding what was their right
to courses about their experience? They wanted to see themselves
in the curriculum.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
One woman in particular really took the fight for education
equality and cultural preservation to a new level, Doctor Antonio Panoja.
Here she is speaking in a documentary from two thousand
and eight.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
We started to learn from the youth what was happening
to them in the schools.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Doctor Pantoja was a Puerto Rican organizer and activist who
arrived in New York City in nineteen forty four. She
created Aspeeda in the early sixties, which in Spanish means
to aspire. Aspeeda was formed as a place for Puerto
Rican kids to receive support outside of the classroom. The
organization still exists today for all people coming from a
(32:15):
Latine background. Doctor Pantoha believed that because of the language barrier,
the children were not learning anything and they would leave school.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
There's a lot that says that they will take you
to jail if you don't take your children to school.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like we've been hearing, the dropout rate had been a
problem for decades, and it was due in part to
failed support from the public school system. That's turning your own.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Okay, if there's a lot of that says that I
have to take my children to school, then I can
accuse you as an institution where I have brought my
children and you don't teach them.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Doctor Pantoja brought the problem to the newly founded Puerto
Rican Legal Defense Fund, and in nineteen seventy two they
did in fact sue the state in what's known as
Aspeeda versus Board of Education. The New York Board of
Education settled and created what's called a consent decree, meaning
the schools would have to provide special language assistance to
children who did not speak English. This lawsuit was one
(33:13):
of many in the nineteen seventies around the country that
led to national legislation. It did in fact lead to
change and built the foundation of what we know today
is bilingual education. As I went farther and farther down
the rabbit hole, I often wondered, what does Puerto Rico
(33:34):
have to do with my Dominican American southern upbringing and
my now Domini and Mary Peruvian children sharing a common language?
Meant Puerto Ricans were fighting for all the Spanish speakers
in the state because New York would eventually receive Dominican
immigrants people from Mexico, Central and South America. After English,
(33:55):
Spanish is the most common language spoken in this region,
and the people who fought for bilingual education created a
ripple effect that is bigger than Spanish speakers. Virginia shares
the time she gave a talk.
Speaker 7 (34:09):
This guy in the back of the auditorium, tall, very tall, blonde,
raises his hand to make a comment, and he says, well,
bilingual education was the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I'm thinking, I know he was Latino. He says,
when I came from Russia, if I had not had
(34:32):
bilingual program to get into I would not be doing
the things that I'm doing today.
Speaker 9 (34:38):
And that was like, that's right.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
Bilingual education doesn't only mean Spanish English. It's now a
tool for learning and bringing children into school systems that
we never had before.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Currently, New York States public schools boast a population of
over two hundred and sixty thousand students who speak over
two hundred languages. From the web, it says all teachers
must be skilled in how to support English language learners
as they acquire content knowledge while also progressing towards English
(35:15):
language proficiency. But in early education, you the parent should
always be on the lookout because the teaching requirements are different.
While your toddler's teacher may be good at taking care
of a three year old, they may not be trained
in working with bilingual children. And well, we've all heard
(35:35):
how that can go. In fall of twenty twenty two,
Matting finally entered the public school system. He was assessed
for a language. Leading up to that, because we filled
out a form that said we had another home language, I.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Get a lot of things, I get a talk test.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Marting was placed in NL or English has a new
language because he tested as transitioning or in the middle,
which gives him one hundred and eighty minutes per week
of support. Bilingual education works in a variety of ways
in New York State today, and because we're not in
a dual language district, Mutting was assigned an NL teacher
who comes into the classroom and along with the classroom teacher,
(36:20):
they work as code teachers. Matting has now been in
a classroom environment that has really supported his English language
development for only about a year.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Now I really know how to speak to you of them,
and who.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Helped you with that? The teacher, mister m Yeah, the
school year just ended. When we started our journey into
public schools, Mudding's NL teacher told us that we have
to continue the home language. He said, quote the better
Mutting spoke Spanish, the better he would speak English. All
(36:54):
of the stress that I had felt for the past
year slowly started to melt away. Knew he was in
a place that was going to support him. I now
know that it was easier for someone to say that
there was something wrong with him than to really assess
why he was acting that way. And he did improve
immensely once we moved him to a new program with love,
(37:15):
care and dedication from both educators and us. Mating is
not going to be the same as any other child,
and we knew that, and so we fought for him.
This is cliche, but children are actually like sponges. Through
this journey, I've learned you have to see the promise
(37:36):
in every child. Kids will learn Intelligence exists in many
different forms. It's not just one construct. Frederick Douglass said,
power concedes nothing without a demand as parents, we have
to individually advocate for our own kids. That's the only
piece of the puzzle we have control over. We know
(37:57):
them better than anyone because as we've seen, until the
world is more accepting of everyone, there is still work
to be done, and if you aren't comfortable in English,
there is support. Schools and the city have resources. Bi
Lingual education as it stands today exists because people throughout
history fought for it. To them, I say, go ask yes,
(38:25):
you know, and you know what? And all of this
questioning how Martine is making out after the pandemic. My
two year old is in daycare in English now. I
didn't even realize that she's speaking English in school on
Spanish at home.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
Wash my hands.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, because I only hear her speak Spanish. It never
occurred to me how quickly she would start code switching.
Like my brother said when I reported on this in
twenty eighteen, ling is one of the best gifts you
can pass on to your child. There's more places to visit, books,
(39:05):
to read, movies, to see more of the world to absorb.
Generations of us have done it like my parents did
with me, and my husband and I are succeeding with
our own kids.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Bilingualism really is a superpower. This episode was produced by
(40:04):
Gini Montalbo. It was edited by Mark Vagan. It was
mixed by Stephanie Lebau and Julia Caruso. The Latino USA
team also includes Roxanna guire, Felicia Dominguez, Fernando Chavari, Jessica Ellis,
Victoria Strada, Dominiquin Estrosa, Renaldo Leos Junior, Luis Luna Marta Martinez,
JJ Crubin, Tasha Sandoval and Nancy Trujillo, Beenille, Ramidez, Marlon Bishop,
(40:29):
Maria Garcia and myself are co executive producers and I'm
your host, Marino Rossa. Join us again on our next episode.
In the meantime, look for us on all of our
social media. I'll see you on Instagram. Evyes, Ciao.
Speaker 10 (40:46):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation,
working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide,
the John Dee and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the
Heis and Simon's Foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More
at hsfoundation dot org.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Mon No Messy Up
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