Colin Baker

About the author: Colin Baker is a professor of education in the School of Education at the University of Wales at Bangor. He is the author of numerous books on bilingualism, including Attitudes and Language, A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism, the Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (with Sylvia Prys Jones), and The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals.

The claim that bilingual education is a modern phenomenon is misplaced. In the United States, bilingual education flourished in the early immigrant settlements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up through the early twentieth century. Bilingualism suffered setbacks after the First World War as a result of antiforeigner sentiments. It reemerged in the 1960s as a result of increased immigration and the rise of the civil rights movement, which espoused equality of educational opportunity. Through...