합리적 무지

Almost 20 years ago, the state of California passed a law that severely restricted bilingual education in public schools. They argued that students were lingering in their native language, which put them behind when they had to learn and use English in higher grades. If the state could somehow create a barrier to students using their bilingual skills they thought that this would help the merging into American society, but this is quite the contrary. For example, once a Korean student in Los Angeles switched from a dual language program to an English-only honors program, he lost his ability to write and speak Korean, which meant he couldn’t speak to his Korean speaking family. Activists are working to overturn this law and implement a unified program where half of teaching is taught in a foreign language such as Korean, Spanish, or Vietnamese, and the other half English.  

In our class we’ve discussed the Rational Ignorance model that shows that there is an optimal level of ignorance. In this case the state of California back in 1998 argued that there is an optimal level of ignorance of say the Korean language for the native Korean speaking student, and most of the time should be devoted to learning English. But with the help of activists this type of thinking has changed. This change may be hard to accomplish because due to an increase in marginal costs like time, training, and wages for teaching staff, it may seem that it’s optimal to have more ignorance with a foreign language, but the present level of ignorance regarding the foreign language is showing to provide negative externalities for the student like loss of culture and identity, and the alternative provides positive externalities. With an extended bilingual program, students can succeed with achievements like graduating high school with a seal of biliteracy and broaden the way people can communicate within their community, in business, and with their families.