As the community's only dual-language program, we are proud to serve the unique needs of the South Bronx. Dual-language recognizes the myriad advances our understanding of cognitive development which all point to the same thing: Learning a second, third, in fact any number of languages is not detrimentle to students in the earliest stages of their development. In fact, learning one language actually serves to support the development of all the languages a student will learn. Most importantly, the window of language acquisition is small - children can not acquire language in the natural way by the time they've reached ten years old!
This is something many have understood for a long time. Think of the family who moved to this language context ten, twenty, even fifty years ago. The children who were younger than ten or perhaps even a little older speak English without an accent. However, no matter how much time has passed, those who were introduced to the language when they were even a few years older will have the accent of their home-language for the rest of their lives. If anyone ever tries to convince you that there is no window, challenge them to find an adult who, short of intensive and specific training, learned a language when they were older and does not have an accent.
The reason for this window can be understood shortly as the idea of elasticity. Just like silly puddy or sweatpants, there are parts of our brain that are elastic, or can stretch, at different times of our lives. Noam Chomsky touched on this .as he developed the idea of generative grammar, the idea that all language is really just local words and sounds that fit over a pattern of language structure that is innate to our humanity. If language is a basic quality of being human, then, he and others reasoned, there must be something in our brain that every one of us has that no other human has. An excellent reference on this idea is The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. Humans, he argues, have a basic need to learn language, but eventually, it's not efficient for them to continue being open to learning it. That is, by the time you're 15, you should be thinking about other things like chasing dinner or tending to the offspring. Thus, the brain evolved with a window (actually, a few for a few aspects) to learn language.
This, of course, means that it's not worth starting French or German in seventh grade. In fact, it's cognitively laughable.
However, the students from our community do not often have the luxury of learning a language for the sake of academic curiosity. We live in a community whose Puerto Rican and Dominican roots are strong enough to make Spanish pervasive. And many of these students have roots in these and other places - fragile roots whose survival depends on their ability to communicate with their extended families and, in a larger sense, with the communities that define their heritage. We live in a country who has consistently supported, politically, a party whose disrespect for diversity means everything from inhumane immigration policy to zero acecptance of Spanish as a viable primary language. This is after we consider, of course, the fact the language of business, government, and even the media is English.
It is, in our view, unacceptable to make a student choose between either of these worlds.
Our dual language program takes advantage of our students' natural ability to learn language and exposes them in a way a standard program never could. The process involves making students comfortable with the idea of school, and teaching them at first a bit more in their primary language while exposing them to the other. As they become acclamated and feel more confident in their home language, we bring out more of the second language. For instance, an English dominant student in our program will receive first seventy, then sixty, then finally only 50% of her instruction in English, over a few years. However, during this time, she has had the chance to develop one language, and then use that as a stepping-stone for her second.