Native Education History

Preservationist talks about Dakota history and small-town life

Jeff Severns Guntzel focuses on investigative and data-driven projects, as well as on engaging readers as idea generators, sources and content contributors. Before joining MinnPost, he was a senior editor at the Utne Reader. For this project, Jeff is visiting — via in-person visits, texting, Facebook and other social media — with young people throughout rural Minnesota to show life there through their eyes and voices.

Steve Date is a teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools and a part-time video journalist and documentary filmmaker who will be both making videos and coaching young people on their own work. One of his films is about a company-owned coal mining town in West Virginia, called "Welcome to Coalwood." To see more of Steve's work go to his website, See to Sea Productions .

Also contributing to the project is Gregg Aamot , a former newsman for The Associated Press and the author of "The New Minnesotans: Stories of Immigrants and Refugees."  He is a journalism and English instructor at Ridgewater College and Southwest Minnesota State University.

Bilingual Education Debate | Medicare Education

Bilingual education in itself could refer to different programs that have different focus areas but in general teach students in two languages. Most programs are aimed at those students whose proficiency in English is limited. Bilingual education programs allows these kids to learn academic subjects in their native language while learning English as a second language. Bilingual education debate is usually about this program of education which is known as Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE). Other bilingual education programs aim at increasing fluency in two languages, therefore, teaching English language students, a second language, and teaching English to native speakers of languages like Spanish. Variations and combinations of these two types of programs are also used very widely.

Bilingual education history can be traced to 1968 with the passing of the Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which funded schools to help those students learn English whose native language was not English. This act or more specifically Title VII which is known as the Bilingual Education Act, led to the start of the TBE program that taught English as a second language to a large immigrant population. The program catered mostly to the large Hispanic population settled in the United States. The bilingual education debate has seen detractors and supporters argue about it for several years now. Let us take a look at the bilingual education pros and cons as put forward by the two groups.

Bilingual Education Pros

Effectiveness in learning patterns due to use of the native language is one of the biggest arguments put forward in the favor of bilingual education programs. The use of a language that they are already familiar with ensures that they do not lag behind English language speaking students. Also in psychological terms, the fact that learning in their native language allows them to keep up boosts their confidence when it comes to the process of learning English. One of the advantages of bilingual education that is often quoted by supporters of the program has been the emphasis on quality. Programs of bilingual education start off in a manner that the child receives ninety percent of the instruction in their native language and ten percent in English and with each grade there is a gradual shift in percentage, slowly increasing fluency in English.

The education of the South African native

Indian Education in Canada: The challenge

Alaska native education, Sheldon Jackson to Paul Jensen 1884-1984

The Cambridge history of the native peoples of the Americas

A history of native education in Natal, being a reprint of Chapter II (with diagram and relative appendices) of the Report of the Natal Provincial Committee on Native Education, 1944-1946