Latin-American Studies

In the recent past, language acquisition is a concept that has increasingly dominated the political and educational spheres in America. This can be attributed to the critical role that it plays in cohesive interaction at different levels.

Based on credible field researches conducted in the US, Crawford contends that bilingualism in education is very beneficial to the minority groups. He decries the media concerns that posit that this contributes to increased drop out rates of this population from learning institutions. According to him, other independent factors that stem from economic and social issues can be implicated for the increased drop out cases. In particular, he cites shortage of staff as the main reason undermining the effectiveness of bilingual education.
However, Frerking (2003) reports that bilingual education deprives the natives of an opportunity to secure jobs in future. This is because most colleges and jobs require fluency in English. Lack of sound college education makes the natives to assume less rewarding menial jobs.  Irrespective of the fact that the law provides bilingual education alternative in public schools, Frerking (2003) asserts that most Latino parents are making follow ups to ensure that heir children are enrolled in English only classes.

With regard to bilingualism and politics, Rodriguez (1998) argues that bilingualism is closely associated with racism. Thus anti immigrants and conservatives are likely to support employment of English as a sole language than their Latino and liberal counterparts. In addition, he indicates that despite the continued increase of the Latino population in the country, they are underrepresented in the national electorate and major parties frequently omit them from the voting calculus. Nevertheless there are fears that this is likely to change as more Latinos have applied for citizenship.

Perhaps the most recent developments with regards to bilingualism and politics are presented by the Associate Press (2007) that quotes the former house speaker Newt Gingrich who contended that bilingualism is a language of persons residing in informal areas.. He then requested the government to stop printing the ballot papers in various languages and contended that English needs to be made a common language in this country.