Great Society Laws Essay

Great Society Laws and Programs

Bilingual Education Act of 1968

The Bilingual Education Act of 1968, also known as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968, was signed into law on January 2, 1968. This law recognized the need of bilingual education for the large number of students with a small amount of English language skills in America. Around that time there was an eighty percent dropout rate in Hispanics and Native Americans. It was the first federal legislation to attempt to begin to level the equality of learning within minorities. This law would have the government financially support the bilingual education programs. The money would be given to the school district who then distributed the funds to the bilingual education programs. The money

Supporters also believed that this law could improve the drop out rate from high schools and colleges. The Hoover Institute also had the top five reasons why Hispanics dropped out according to Spanish speaking educators. The reasons were: the students fell behind early on because they didn’t know English when being taught the basics, many teachers did not have patience or respect for non English speakers, they were not surrounded by English enough to catch on, they didn’t see why higher education was necessary if there were jobs without degrees, they were in a family where education was not the top priority. Those who were against the law believe it is too costly, provides a reason to resist assimilation of the dominant language, and is ineffective because “Immigrants are kept linguistically isolated” according to the University of Michigan. Some even argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was not a valid argument in this situation. They argued that all the supplies and tools were offered to all students, it was just there was a lack of equality in circumstance, which legally no one can