The increase in world interest in bilingual/bicultural education is a result of decline of colonialism and political imperialism; the rise of new national states, minorities, and internationalism; and the democratization of education. Formerly, bilingual education was the privilege of the elite; now it is the expression of a demand for recognition by the speakers of dialects. In considering bilingual education around the world today, it is evident that there is a complex interaction between the school, the local authorities, the attitudes of the community, and the comparability of resources. The bilingual education situation in the world generally breaks down into those countries balancing between the need for development of a local language and the economic need for a world language, such as the Phillipines, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan, and many of the African nations; those countries coping with the complex educational situation of many dialects and languages, such as China, Russia, India, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia; and those countries in which minority groups are attempting to establish school programs in their own languages, such as the British Isles and the United States. In other cases, bilingual education is the means of preserving the identities of constituent groups of approximately equal size and political power, such as in Switzerland and Belgium. (LG)