First-Grade Beginning

"When I knocked at the door," recalls Carlos Rivera, 36, who supervises elementary Spanish in the El Paso public schools, "I repeated several times, 'Pase usted,' but I did not enter." The door led to a first-grade classroom filled with tots, few of whom spoke Spanish. They had been told only that their expected visitor "understands English, but does not speak it." The children soon grasped the meaning of Rivera's phrase ("Enter"), and repeated the invitation to come in. Rivera smiled and walked in with a greeting: "!Buenos dias, ninos!"

Since that September morning in 1951, when El Paso began its experiment in teaching English-speaking first-graders Spanish, Carlos Rivera has been a busy man. For years El Paso's two English-language newspapers, the Times and the Herald-Post, had advocated the project. When Dr. Mortimer Brown took over as school superintendent, the idea got a trial. "The minute I had unfolded the plan to Rivera," says Dr. Brown, "I knew he was my man. In his excitement he began pounding the table."

Colors & Clothing. The son of a Mexican cattleman who lived in El Paso, Rivera himself learned no English until he was eight (he now speaks seven languages). He knows, better than most El Paso citizens, how formidably high is his city's language barrier, which splits the town into a Spanish-speaking (65%) v. an English-speaking (35%) community. Relatively few El Pasoans speak both. For example, in the city's Bowie High School, under Texas law, English is the official school language. But a large proportion of Bowie students, those of Mexican descent, rarely speak any English when they leave th school grounds.

During his first year of door-knocking, Rivera popped in on 25 first-grade classes, giving each 20 minutes, twice a week. The children soon eagerly awaited the visits of "el senor Rivera." Avoiding any appearance of "teaching," el senor concentrated on training his pupils' ears, getting his little hosts to think as well as speak in Spanish. With pictures or the actual objects involved, he engaged the children in increasingly fluent chats about such commonplaces as food, animals, colors, clothing and toys. To measure progress, Rivera, showing a drawing of a man, would say: "?Esta es una madre?" Or sometimes he asked: "?Servimos azucar en los huevos?" (Shall we serve sugar on the eggs?). If anyone replied yes, Rivera would backtrack on the "lesson."

Senora & Senorita. The lessons were soon the talk of El Paso. Some parents, embarrassed because their kids casually chattered with maids whom the adults falteringly addressed in crude "kitchen Spanish," persuaded Superintendent Brown to start grownups' classes in conversational Spanish. Under Brown's guidance, Rivera has branched out into radio & TV programs aimed at putting thousands more in the area on a bilingual footing. This year Dr. Brown assigned two more classroom visitors (a senora and a senorita) to the circuit, which now takes in the second grade. In six more years, progressing one grade a year, bilingual education will extend all the way through El Paso's eighth grade.

Last week, after opening a class for mothers at the local women's club, Carlos Rivera was planning to teach his techniques this spring in nearby towns, and next summer at New Mexico Western College. With 1,672 of El Paso's first-and second-graders already learning two languages, Rivera was glancing fondly at next year's kindergarten pupils, who will learn their "Pasen ustedes" along with their "Excuse me, pleases."

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