The crucial thing is to make sure children are learning while they are in school; they must learn English in order to become fully competent citizens in this society. But learning other things at the same time will not impede their acquisition of English, and it will make them better students who know more in the long run.

Bilingual education is designed to produce competent scholars who can achieve in English language classrooms, and the evidence suggests it succeeds in this goal. Many of us believe that a slightly more ambitious goal--that of producing bilinguals, or children with competence in English and their native language--would be appropriate and desireable.

But public policy in most states of the union restricts the reach of the elementary programs by mandating "transitional" bilingualism.

In an immigrant society such as this one, the bilingualism one most frequently encounters is "folk bilingualism"--associated with the working classes, thus undesirable and undervalued. Members of recent immigrant groups are induced to abandon their traditional languages in order to become "good Americans", while upper middle class high school juniors are sent off to Europe or to Latin America to acquire a second language.

Elite bilingualism--that acquired in foreign language classrooms, on university exchange programs, or by having a French governess--is clearly a good thing. Somehow, in the mind of the viewer, it is of greater value than the bilingualism acquired inevitably by the child growing up in Spanish Harlem or in Brownsville, Texas.

In their ultimate value to the society, however, and in terms of the cognitive accomplishment they represent, the two kinds of bilingualism are indistinguishable. By supporting bilingual education, we are not subverting the goal of a unified United States in which everyone speaks English. We are affirming that goal, and affirming its relevance to all sectors of the society.

At the same time as we are selecting the educational programs that best help limited English proficient children learn English, we should strive toward a society in which bilingualism is not confined to the lowest classes, but one in which all children have as much right to be bilingual as they have to speak English well.

CATHERINE E. SNOW is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education. She has taught at the Institute for General Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam, where she conducted research on the learning of Dutch by both English speakers and by the children of "guest workers." She is currently carrying out research with non-English speaking children in English classrooms at the United Nations International School and in New Haven, Conn. public schools.