English-only classrooms and the language wars

For four decades, the United States tried to make English the primary language of instruction in Puerto Rico's public schools. The policy failed so completely that Spanish had to be formally reinstated, still within the living memory of people alive today.

Under the insular government of the Foraker Act, the Department of Instruction of Puerto Rico was formed, headed by Martin Grove Brumbaugh, who would later become governor of Pennsylvania. From the start, teaching was done entirely in English, with Spanish taught only as a special subject, although both languages were officially recognized on the island by law.

The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 cemented it further, making English the official language of Puerto Rico's courts, government, and public education system, extending the reach of the policy well beyond the classroom.

American administrators genuinely emphasized building a modern school system, with real investment in buildings, teacher training, and curriculum. But the English-only push provoked real fears, described in sources of the time as fears of "cultural genocide," and generated sustained resistance from teachers, parents, politicians, and intellectuals across the island for decades.

The schools became a real site of cultural conflict. Local middle-class teachers opposed English-only instruction, arguing instead for an education that combined modern pedagogy with the island's Hispanic language and cultural traditions. A 1935 study done in New York found Puerto Rican schoolchildren there severely deficient in basic academic skills, a warning sign, in retrospect, of what the policy was really costing children both on the island and on the mainland.

The dismantling came slowly, not as a single reversal. After 39 years of imposed English instruction, Spanish became the preferred language of instruction of the University of Puerto Rico in 1942. In the island's public schools more broadly, Spanish became the vernacular language of teaching and learning sometime between 1940 and 1950, effectively marking the quiet failure of the original U.S. language policy after four decades of effort.

Sources: Historia de Puerto Rico. Freeze 2026-08-22.