Comparison Of Contemporary Sino-American Bilingual Education Policies

Beginning with Sino-American bilingual education, the dissertation explores the intrinsic factors affecting contemporary Sino-American bilingual education policies, and attempts to reveal the nature of bilingual education and the ought-to-be trends of Chinese bilingual education policy.The dissertation is divided into four parts:The first part describes contemporary bilingual education policy of U.S.A., which can be roughly divided into two stages: opportunist stage and dismissive stage. The dissertation especially discusses in detail the five reauthorizations of 1968 Bilingual Education Act.The second part presents contemporary bilingual education policy of China, which can be divided into three periods: innovative period, frustrating period, and restoring period. The dissertation mainly discusses the development of bilingual education in minority regions under ethnic policies and language policies of Communist Party of China since the founding of People's Republic of China.The third part is comparison. The dissertation discusses the deep-seated roots that affect Sino-American bilingual education polices from social functions and economic drives. It argues that Sino-American bilingual education policies function as social mobility and social stratification, and are also impacted by modern rationality and global economy.The fourth part is reflection. Through longitudinal and transverse studies of Sino-American bilingual education policies, the dissertation argues that bilingual education is the pursuit of human authentic being; an inevitable choice for promoting children's growth; an effective approach to construct a democratic society, and affirmation and respect for social differences. Therefore, the ought-to-be trends of Chinese bilingual education policy are to place bilingual education into critical position of ethnic education; to formulate bilingual education policy within whole projects of national development; to draft out a bilingual education act; and to quicken the preparation and training of bilingual teachers as well as the development of bilingual teaching materials.