The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981

Despite controversies over current educational practices, Texas boasts a rich and vibrant bilingual tradition - and not just for Spanish-English instruction, but for Czech, German, Polish, and Dutch as well. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Texas educational policymakers embraced, ignored, rejected, outlawed, and then once again embraced this tradition. In ""The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981"", Carlos Kevin Blanton traces the educational policies and their underlying rationales, from Stephen F. Austin's proposal in the 1830s to ""Mexicanize"" Anglo children by teaching them Spanish along with English and French, through the 1981 passage of the most encompassing bilingual education law in the state's history. Drawing on primary materials, Blanton presents the Texas experience in light of national trends and movements, such as Progressive Education, the Americanization Movement, and the Good Neighbor Movement. By tracing the many changes that eventually led to the re-establishment of bilingual education in its modern form in the 1960s and the 1981 passage of a landmark state law, Blanton reconnects Texas with its bilingual past.