Bilingual Education for the Mexican Americans - A Way out of the Vicious Circle?

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Potsdam (Anglistics/ American Studies), course: Seminar: How Race is Lived in America, language: English, abstract: This paper on the Mexican Americans in the south-western states in the United States aims at examining whether bilingual education of this ethnic group could be a means to help the Mexican Americans escape the vicious circle they live in. The introduction will give a short historical overview over the Mexican Americans' schooling. In the main part, the description of what is referred to as vicious circle will be followed by the depiction of the Mexican Americans' situation in school in the south-western states of the United States. As this situation cannot be considered as good, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 which marked a first step towards an improvement will be introduced. Apart from that, two models of bilingual education will mainly find reconsideration and will be compared with each other regarding their usefulness to give the Mexican Americans an equal educational opportunity as the Anglo Americans have. Towards the end of the main part, the attempt will be made to answer the topic question of this paper. Several obstacles on the way to 'good' bilingual schooling and possible alternatives will be mentioned then. The concluding remarks will sum up the result of this paper and will shortly focus on the contemporary situation of the Mexican Americans in the American school system. [...]