Issues in Bilingual and Modern Language Education

In these various essays, written over a period of twenty years while serving as a foreign language teacher and Director of a K-12 Bilingual Department, Adolph (Adolfo) Caso reacted to various educational situations while championing the need for limited or non English-speaking foreign students to maintain fluency in their native languages. Adolfo came to America when eleven years old. Because he only spoke his native dialect, in effect he should have been considered and classified as semi-lingual). He completed only the first grade in his native country before World War II began; then, after entering the American School System as a sixth grader, he successfully completed all of the public school graduation requirements without any native language assistance. Having been placed in French classes, before long, he was more fluent in that language rather than his own. Nevertheless, he finished his bachelor degree from Northeastern University and his Arts Master degree from Harvard. In this collection, Adolfo deals with issues of foreign language student placements, the misunderstanding of bilingualism on the part of many educators, and the artificial importance given to foreign language studies at the expense of bilingualism. He even deals with the potential role of Swahili in the public school systems. For those interested in applied linguistics, Adolfo proposes a new alphabet system commensurate with the needs of the pervasive computer age.