Thank goodness our criminal justice system officially rejects punishing the children of lawbreakers.

This means that Americans should not support policies that harm the children of illegal immigrants. After all, they are children.

Sentiment against illegal immigrants is high right now. And Texas may be poised for a return to the bad old days when it comes to educating children whose primary language is Spanish – be they illegal immigrants or American citizens.

An illuminating article in The Handbook of Texas describes the oppression that Spanish-speaking children once suffered upon entering public school.

"In the early 1970s, the United States Commission on Civil Rights reported that Mexican-American students caught speaking Spanish faced fines (a penny for every Spanish word), had to stand on a black square or were made to write 'I must not speak Spanish.' School personnel rationalized these actions as pedagogical measures."

Few educators back then understood, or cared, that learning English did not equate to learning math or science. They rigidly followed the "melting pot" dictums that often forced Mexican-American children to spend two or three years in the first grade to learn English.

Thousands of children suffered irreversible harm simply because they spoke the language they learned at home.

In 1973, the Bilingual Education and Training Act officially ended the English-only era that ruled Texas schools through much of the 20th century.

The bilingual program provided Spanish-speaking kids with instruction in Spanish and a gradual transition to English by the end of elementary school. It was designed to be humane.

The U.S. Supreme Court cemented bilingual education into the public school curriculum in 1974 when it declared in Lau vs. Nichols that children who cannot understand the language of instruction are denied access to a quality education.

Unfortunately, bilingual education programs in Texas have not honored their promise.

Too many teachers found it expedient to keep teaching students in Spanish long after they should have transitioned to English. And the dropout rates for Hispanic students are still abysmally high more than three decades after the advent of bilingual education.

The frustration and failures are leading language-acquisition researchers, educators and lawmakers to ponder programs that might replace the traditional bilingual education model.

And this brings us to how coming changes in language instruction combined with the nativist reaction to illegal immigration could lead us back to the bad old days.

Some lawmakers – thankfully not very many – are proposing drastic changes in state law.

State Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, has filed a bill to do away completely with the long-standing requirement that school districts provide bilingual programs for students with limited proficiency in English.

There's increasing talk – mostly by those who know nothing about the technically complicated field of language acquisition – about bringing back so-called English immersion programs for Spanish-speaking kids.

In my opinion, these programs are analogous to teaching a child to swim by throwing him in the deep end. Some make it. Many don't.

Somehow, the answer must lie in newly developing dual-language programs that put English-speaking and Spanish-speaking kids together in the classroom starting in preschool or kindergarten.

Dual-language programs vary from school to school. Essentially, students get instruction in English one day and in Spanish the next.

These programs have several advantages. They eliminate classrooms full of Hispanic students segregated in bilingual education programs. And they give black and white students – those whose parents volunteer – the opportunity for early instruction in a foreign language.

The battle during the next several years will be joined around academicians and their research into which model is most effective: English immersion, transitional bilingual education or a dual-language blend. Who knows which one will win the day.

Several things are certain, however.

The educational fate of millions of "limited English proficient" Hispanic students is at stake in years to come. Acquisition of English is the key variable that determines their academic success.

Hispanic civil-rights organizations will be closely watching these developments. If Texas doesn't do the right thing, yet another endless round of federal civil-rights litigation will follow.

As a taxpayer, I won't feel good about financing the legal defense for a school district or state government that didn't handle this issue properly and got sued as a result. But, of course, I will have no choice but to pay the bills.

The legal outcomes are predictable. Federal judges don't smile kindly upon states and school districts that treat little children shabbily because their parents crossed the border illegally and didn't teach them English before sending them to school.

Whether law enforcement agencies should round up immigrant families and deport them is a separate issue. The reality is that these children live in Texas and they need an education.