Bilingual education was first started in 1968. It was a new means of educating children who spoke a minority language. thirty-one years later the same problems exist for children who speak a language other than English. The bilingual education experiment has been a failure and now it is time to move on. The first exclusively English initiatives were launched in 1981 by the newly elected President Reagan. The conflict over bilingual education has continued ever since. Twenty-three states currently have “English-only” laws and 4 states have pending laws. The issue of bilingual education and the conflict surrounding it focuses primarily between whites and Hispanics, although since the mid-1970s Chinese and Mung cultures have also been involved. However bilingual education has failed, currently the movement is towards an English-only education system. The simple fact is that people who speak a language in this country will never get ahead. We challenged the ignorant notion that you could get by without speaking English; or speak minimal English, but this is a promotional and even more ignorant idea that you don't need to speak English fluently to be successful in America. We didn't know in 1968 that bilingual education wouldn't work, however, it's time to move forward and do the right thing and switch to teaching English only. Lyndon Johnson was president, we had the futile dream of world peace, at the same time we were “bombing the North Vietnamese into the Stone Age.” In the final year of LBJ's presidency several new educational initiatives were undertaken as part of the final step in his "Great Society" programs. One of these new initiatives was bilingual education. At the time it was supported by white liberals in this country, for the most part the conservative Hispanic sect was against such measures. The idea at the time was for children to learn in their native language and simply learn English gradually. These ideas were radicalized in the 1970s, however, the premise moved away from gradually learning English; speaking in English wasn't really necessary. In 1981, bilingual education came under attack by the newly elected President Reagan who proposed switching to an English-only system. At the time the idea was not seen as anti-Hispanic or as some sort of racist proposal. Reagan was adored by the majority of... half the paper ......and from 1908 it was printed exclusively in English by the US government. Teddy Roosevelt said in 1908 that “To print the American Constitution in any other language except English would be to spit in the face of our ancestors.” The United States Supreme Court has also ruled numerous times that English-only laws do not violate the First Amendment of our Constitution. I personally believe that there should be one primary language in our nation, not 3 or 4 or 1200. George Washington was… When he gave orders at Valley Forge in Russian, he spoke English. Abe Lincoln did not deliver the Gettysburgh Address in Portuguese. It is not too much to ask that every American citizen can speak English fluently. No one is forced to live here, and if you refuse to fit in you probably shouldn't live here. If you absolutely want to speak German, go ahead, but do it in Germany. While you are in America however we speak English and if you don't know it you are in trouble. Conflict is overrated. It is not a question of racism or any other type of hatred. It's a simple question of principle. Americans speak English, not much to ask.