It is obvious that if these children are spending their days in school speaking Spanish, they are not going to be as fluent in English as they should be.
For decade's, debates have been contested about whether this method of learning truly works or not. In the 1970's, numerous ideas were presented about bilingual teaching. Jose Cardenas and Blandin Cardenas, of San Antonio, published their "theory of incompatibilities."" According to this theory, Mexican-American children in the United States are so different from the "majority- children that they must be given bilingual and bicultural instruction in order to achieve academic success (Porter par.6). Another man in favor of bilingual education was Jim Cummins, a bilingual-education theorist. Cummins presented two hypotheses concerning the ongoing battle of language. His "developmental interdependence- hypothesis suggests that learning to read in one's native language facilitates reading in a second language. His "threshold- hypothesis suggests that children's achievement in a second language depends on the level of their mastery of their native language. Also, the most positive cognitive effects occur when both languages are highly developed (Porter par.7). The bilingual education program was being praised by many highly educated adults. Accordingly, schools all over the country began adopting this program.
From the beginning of this new process, problems remained and many researchers took this as an opportunity to study the people. The accumulated research of the past thirty years reveals almost no justification for teaching children in their native languages to help them learn either English or other subjects. It has been proven that self-esteem is not higher among limited-English students who are taught in their native language. Also, stress is not higher among children who are introduced to English from the first day of school "though self-esteem and stress are the issues most often mentioned by supporters of bilingual teaching (Porter par.