The fierce debate in the United States over bilingual education is seen as something of a curiosity north of the border, where bilingualism is an integral part of Canada's national identity. The so-called "Canadian model" of language learning, which immerses children in a second language for the first few years of their schooling, was first created by a group of English-speaking parents in Quebec and has since spread around the world. In the United States, there are about 240 such immersion programs in schools in 28 states and the District of Columbia. The model has also inspired English immersion programs in Japan, China, and a number of European countries. "By far, immersion is the best program model we've ever seen for children to gain proficiency in a language," says Nancy Rhodes, director of the Washington, DC-based Center for Applied Linguistics.

But Rhodes adds a caveat that is critical for considering the implications of these programs in the United States: the success of this kind of language instruction is contingent on factors that do not exist in many American classroom contexts. Put simply, Rhodes says, "It's a very complicated problem."