Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Portola Valley, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 11, 1998

And finally, we have to come together as one country. We have to learn how to celebrate our differences and deal with them. You know, you've got - and it's a complicated thing. It's easy for everybody to say, I want us to be one America; I want us to all get along; I want us to work together. But there are specific, practical, complicated problems. I'll give you just one example.

You've got an issue on the ballot out here in California relating to bilingual education. And most people think of it as Spanish and English. But if you go to any significant California school district you'll see people from 30 or 40 different racial or ethnic groups. The Fairfax County school district across the river from my office in the White House has young people there from over 175 different racial and ethnic groups, with over 100 native languages in one school district.

Now, I've been very concerned about how these children were getting language instruction and whether they were learning English quickly enough. And frankly, there are some significant shortcomings in our bilingual education program. So I think the people that are concerned about this and put this matter on the ballot, they deserve some acknowledgement that the system we have is not working well for all children.

My problem is, I think if this initiative passes it will make it worse, not better. Because it's one thing to say, well, you're in bilingual education, you can have some instruction in your own language for a year and then you're out; it's fine to say that. But we're talking about 100 different languages now, and children at different stages of their own development. And the transition into English from some languages takes longer than others and for some people takes longer than others.

And even more important - and this is where I think people have a legitimate gripe - of all the kids that need this help today, between 15 and 20 percent of them don't get any help at all. I guess they're in the position that this amendment would put a lot of people in. But they're not getting any help at all, and they're suffering in school because of it. There are a lot of others who - basically the rest of them are divided into two different kinds of programs, and the real problem is there are so many children now whose first language is not English that there are insufficient numbers of trained teachers to deal with it.

Now, I'm going into this in some detail because it's an important issue for California. The parents who don't want their kids held back and given second-class education by being kept in bilingual education programs for 5 and 6 years, they deserve a pat on the back. But the answer is not to say, we'll go to one year and you're out without knowing, number one, what's going to be in that year; number two, can you provide the teachers that need to be provided; number three, is it literally, intellectually possible for every child of every age, no matter what age they are when they come in this country and what their language is, to get that training?