Bilingual Education For decades, immigrant children have been taught in their native languages in schools across the country while slowly and simultaneously receiving English as a second language. But like anything, bilingual education is not without its flaws. In fact, it's plagued with them. After many years of bilingual education in the United States, one thing is certain: it does not work, and it is failing America's immigrant youth. The idea behind bilingual education is that students be taught "academic subjects" such as math, geography, and science "in their native languages (most often Spanish), while slowly and simult