Bilingualism broadens our connections with the world and has many other benefits, including improved brain functioning and heightened sensitivity to the environment (Bhattacharjee, 2012). Should schools focus on ensuring that children are fluent in at least two languages rather than focusing only on English?

In the United States, the tools of government and education have often been used to impose linguistic uniformity. For example, as briefly mentioned above, from 1887 well into the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. government operated schools for Native Americans where students were forbidden from speaking their native languages. The government did not officially repudiate this policy until the Native American Languages Act of 1990.
Although policies officially banning the use of languages other than English no longer exist, schools often adopt practices and policies that make languages other than English invisible. They "create the impression in the minds of ... children that their first language is backward, useless, of low status. [This] negative impression is indelibly carved into their identities" (Salome, 2010, p. 75).
The demands of society create conflict for people whose first language is not English. Many aspects of the identity of these individuals are tied to their first language. The deep emotionality of people's first language is evidenced by the fact that bilingual people tend to pray and swear in their first language (Dewaele, 2004; Salome, 2010, p. 72). However, it is almost impossible to be socially and financially successful in broader society without speaking the majority language. Additionally, nonnative speakers continually receive the message that their first language marks them as inferior.
The result is enormous pressure for linguistic conformity. Linguists often speak of a three-generation rule-the tendency for immigrants to lose their native language within three generations. Members of the immigrant generation usually speak the new language with some difficulty. Their children understand and sometimes speak their parents' language, but they are most comfortable in the language of the nation they live in. Their children (the grandchildren of the immigrants) speak only the language of the nation where they were born. There are certainly many exceptions to this rule. For example, isolated communities like the Amish or Hutterites may still speak German even after hundreds of years of living in the United States. On the other hand, even when maintaining a language is a specific goal for a family, that language may disappear (Field, 2011, p. 179).