Sandra Diaz had the right idea when she de-funded bilingual education. She did it for the wrong reason, but she had the right idea.Whether you like it or not, the universal language of discourse in America is and should be English. Bilingual education is bad policy for the United States and for its immigrants and should be discarded, once and for all, as a failed and misguided idea. It should be accepted that when one decides to come to the United States, the priority is to learn English.That is not to say that Americans should not speak or learn other languages and that the rich cultural diversity of America should not be preserved.However, we should not confuse an English-speaking country whose citizens also happen to speak other languages and maintain different cultural traditions with a bilingual society.History is full of examples of societies being torn apart by linguistic differences and it would be a needless shame were the same to occur here. My generation, and countless generations of immigrants, was exposed to a system that encouraged assimilation and did not consider it to be a negative.English can be learned without destroying diversity. It is a system that has worked, will continue to work, and should never have been abandoned in the first place.