Linguistics
Bilingual Education, Oil, and the Navajo Nation:
New challenges and opportunities in Arizona
The question before the researchers was to find the best means of providing the State of Arizona with the rights to pursue geological surveys of land in the Four Corners region of Arizona. This report is designed to provide Governor Brewer with the best possible information regarding the Navajo people, their language, the issues both positive and negative that may be present in this negotiation, and how the law of the state will be affected by this issue. The introduction covers the tribe and the language proposal and then two separate proposals ranked in order of viability (first is most viable and so on) are provided with the pros and cons of each.
Background
The Navajo Nation
United States law has decreed that American Indian tribes have governance over their own land and that the tribal government can negotiate with state governments when there is any dispute or need to use the land. The land grants are secure for all uses and exploration of said land grants, including mineral rights (CSKT). This provides the Navajo Nation with the ability, according to federal law to block or assist in any way they see fit any use of the land granted to them by the U.S. government.
In land dealings in the past, the Navajo Nation has presented itself in opposition to any exploration or actual industry that could be considered a detriment to the land (Navajo Nation). They have successfully fought in federal court against the State of Arizona regarding land use on multiple occasions and have won some concessions that have set precedent for further negotiations. The Navajo nation has been relatively friendly with the state government, but it may be necessary to gain concessions from the Navajo Nation Government in the first negotiations, or they will seek to use the strict legal letter of the agreement to either not allow extraction of the resource in the future or to force further concessions from the state government which is their right. The proposals presented allow for this possibility, and make it possible to have an extensive agreement with the Navajo Nation Government that covers both exploration and extraction in an environmentally safe manner.
Bilingual Education
In 2000, the people of the State of Arizona voted that English Language Learner students of the state's primary and secondary schools (either those students who have a primary language other than English or who have another language primarily spoken in the home regardless of their English language proficiency) would be taught in English making it the primary language in the schools. Prior to this act, the children of Arizona could be taught using any of a number of languages (primarily Spanish) as long as they were also being taught proficiency in English at the same time. The reason for this was that it was assumed prior to the passage of Proposition 203 that students could learn more efficiently in their primary language and that English would be a natural byproduct of the fact that they were also instructed in English. This system worked for many year, but there were studies conducted that cast doubt over the prospect that students were effectively being taught English and that bilingual education led to both confusion for the student and less successful prospects as an adult. Proposition 203 states that "all children in Arizona public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English" (Mahoney, Thompson & MacSwan). To date the gist of the proposition has been only minimally successful with estimates putting the effectiveness anywhere from 11% proficiency to 37% (Mahoney, Thompson & MacSwan). This effectiveness was gauged based on the law which stated that students would be able to gain proficiency in one year with the immersion technique. This has not proven to be a factual assessment from the data presently collected (Mahoney, Thompson & MacSwan). Most research studies conducted over the past decade in the United States point to the fact that it takes many years to actually gain proficiency in a dense and confusing language such as English and that students actually benefit from being taught in both their native language and English (Shin 14). One study found that bilingual students were better able to read in English from a young age than English monolingual students (Shin 14). The assumption from the data is that having already become proficient in one or more languages makes it that much easier to understand the structure and grammar of another. Thus, the students actually do better on English language tasks.
The issue here is...
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