My Stay at HSS

My faithful companion drove me to HSS at 5:30 a.m.yesterday, Friday, April 1st. Needless to say, I was exhausted. We both had to wait until noon for the scheduled surgery. While at HSS, I had to register with the person in charge of the intake process. As this young woman was entering my information on their database, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was born and raised in Lima, Peru. We switched to Spanish and she told me she had come to the states at the age of eight. Unfortunately, she was placed in bilingual classes in Paterson, NJ. To make a long story short, this young woman was studying to become a nurse but has had to reconsider her choice because of her limited English language skills. She had a very difficult time writing research reports. She told me that all her schooling had been in Spanish with one or two hours a day devoted to English. She also told me that when she graduated from H.S., she applied to one of the local community colleges (Passaic?) but was again placed in bilingual education classes, which in her opinion, were a waste of time. She said she had to undertake learning academic and colloquial English on her own because the education she received as a child, all the way through high school, was inferior. All of her classmates in the bilingual programs in Paterson have had the same experience. She also told me that she was looking forward to being promoted at HSS because the hospital will pay part of the tuition of employees pursuing careers in health care (physician's assistant, nursing, etc.) Learning about her predicament made me sad. She was indeed trapped in the bilingual-education bureaucracy of the public school system. I am against any forced use of the primary language in education beyond the initial stages of culture/language shock. Once a young student understands English and is able to read at nearly grade level, he/she must be placed in regular elementary, middle, or high school classes. My brother faced this problem years ago when my nieces were young, but he absolutely refused to allow the principal to put his daughters in any bilingual program in the California school system.