The Washington Post publishes this interesting analysis by Claire Bowern on the public debate about bilingual education, its two basic opposing views and the value of bilingualism for all students.

“As Claire Bowern, the author of the following post, writes: 'To put it bluntly, bilingualism is often seen as good when it’s rich English speakers adding a language as a hobby or another international language, but bad when it involves poor, minority, or indigenous groups adding English to their first language, even when the same two languages are involved.”

"Bowern is an associate professor of linguistics at Yale University and a fellow in The OpEd Project’s Public Voices project who has been researching topics s related to language and society, including bilingualism, for 15 years. She also works as an advisor to Native American and Australian indigenous groups on language reclamation, maintenance, and bilingual education issues."

Read the complete post here.