Bilingual Education = Unilingual Education
             Bilingual education in America is a sound idea, but it is not truly bilingual education, it is only bilingual for those who do not already speak English. America is a country with more and more cultures mixing together with different areas of America speaking different languages. In California, Spanish is the dominant language next to English, and in states such as Maine, French is spoken. Other cultures should not be assimilated into mainstream America completely, but America shouldn't have to bend over backwards to make life easier for foreigners. In order to become more culturally tolerant, everyone should learn a second language, not just immigrants. Americans should make bilingual education truly bilingual.
             The first reason is to eliminate the effect bilingual education has on poor, non-English speaking children. In Richard Bernstein's, "A War of Words" he says, "Advocates of bilingual education believe that it represents the best chance for non-English speaking children -- who, not so coincidentally, often come from lower-income groups – to enjoy the richness and opportunities of American life", but he also writes, "...Bilingual education is a failure, a tactic that in the end will harm the chances of the generally poor, non-English speaking children ever having a equal share in the promise of American life." By simply having everyone learn a second language eliminates the lines of income, and ethnic background.
             Truly bilingual education would also eliminate the psychological effects it has on non-English speaking children. When they are in a classroom filled with people who do not speak the same language they do, they are forced to feel alone because they can not perform at the same level as their peers, they feel there is something wrong with them, lower than everyone else. "'Empowering Minority Students' does not argu...