Bilingualism and Social Mobility

Where do students get these ideas from? It's not from me. It's got to be from home or from each other.

Some students are incredibly intolerant. They attack the fact that I only know English and can't speak Korean. They lash out as if I should be embarrassed or something. You want embarrassment? YOU CAN'T READ!

These students need to spend less time worrying about my personal cultural decisions and worry about their own academic progress.

I think it's funny that they value their half-assed bilingualism over my mastery of a single language. Their argument is that their current language abilites in other languages provides greater vertical social mobility than mastering a single language (like me). I disagree.

In America, where they're going to spend the MAJORITY of their life, it hinders their vertical social mobility to lack the mastery of a single language (particularly English). If you cannot communicate your ideas, then few people will take you seriously and you will forever flounder. To master language gives you the ability to articulate and to make clear your intentions and to develop a command that is respected by people around you and above you.

Ideally, if you are bilingual, you attain a mastery of both languages. But many of these students are severely immature and underdeveloped in both languages. So how does that increase your social mobility? Perhaps you increase the horizontal mobility, but your vertical mobility is extraordinarily limited.

So if my students want to waste their time thinking that they're somehow better than I am because they have a superficial understanding of English and a pseudo-solid understanding of their native language then I wish them the best of luck in their life endeavors.

Bilingual education is invaluable, but you must have students who are committed to the end result of mastering both languages. I don't consider these students bilingual in any sense, since their language issues are more inhibitive than helpful or productive.

People who are truly bilingual do have greater social mobility (horizontal and vertical). People who think they're bilingual when they haven't even mastered their native language have less vertical social mobility than mastering a single language.