Mandatory bilingual education has proven itself to be a miserable failure. Non-English speaking kids who are thrown into bilingual education never learn to speak, read or write English properly, and that condemns them to a second-class life. There is an argument to be made that this has been done deliberately. Granted, it’s a thin argument, but why would a program that has been proven to be a failure continually be mandated unless there is a desire to have a built-in “victim pool”.
Are there any reliable studies (nothing from FAIR, CIS, Vdare, or similar hate groups) on that? I have always heard this. And at one time believed it myself. But so many people who bring this out as a fact are just folks that dislike other folks who don’t speak English.
And even if there is a problem, maybe the style and approach of bilingual education needs to change instead of stamping it out completely. Throwing a 6 year old who doesn’t speak a lick of English into a 1st Grade class where no one speaks any of his language doesn’t seem too logical. It seems more like a deliberate cruelness to me.
Have you read any of my posts? I’m one of the most pro-immigrant/pro-Spanish-language participants in this thread and I gave a link describing one such study.
We already have English as a Second Language classes. My middle school, which had first- and second-generation immigrants whose parents didn’t speak a word of English, and didn’t use bilingual education but had ESL classes, seemed to work just fine; I can remember two first-gen Russian immigrants, one first-gen Polish immigrant and many first- and second-gen Mexican immigrants in my classes and none of them had a problem speaking English. Granted, the Russians and Pole and many of the Mexicans may have learned English before coming over, and I couldn’t tell you how old they were when they immigrated, but I do remember having a lot of Mexican friends in ESL classes and it seemed to work out pretty well for them.
Well folks, they’re here and they’re staying and more arrive every day. Making English “official” is sorta like proclaiming that brown skin is illegal. It’s unenforceable, pointless, and won’t change a goddamn thing. I was in a restaurant in Gilroy, CA a few months ago, which is only about an hour south of San Francisco, and not a soul in there spoke English. I’m assuming that at least some of them were legals, and proclaiming English to be ‘official’ will never change the way they communicate. Being the sort of person who tries to take the least path of resistance, and planning to spend at least part of my retirement in an RV in the Southwest, I am now enrolled in my third Spanish course. Survival of the fittest and all that.
Baloney–NPR just had a special on a family from Waukegan IL-the mom brought the kids here illegally, Dad is here legally. Mom and kids went back to Mexico because Mom was homesick. She now regrets having done that because her kids are not getting a decent education. The people from work that are Mexican–most have family back there, kids, parents, cousins-every permutation of blood kin. One very sad thing about it all is that (for instance) this one girl at work, her grandfather cannot come see her in Chicago, because he lives in Mexico. Unfair? Absolutely. But if the problem of illegal immigration was not as big, perhaps he could have come (he passed away last spring).
As compared to the German Americans who changed their names and even the names of their food during WW1–to show their allegiance to America. I am NOT calling for anything like that here (it’s more than a bit silly-and they did it out of justifiable fear of rank prejudice), but waving a Mexican flag when you are here illegally and want to get in is short sighted. The leaders of that May 1 protest saw that and begged participants to put the flags away. Absolutely be proud of your Mexican heritage, but your American now.
Every day I work–today at 1pm. Elderly gentleman needed CBI-continous bladder irrigation. No english; no family. Nobody speaks Spanish on my floor. I spend about an hour finding someone who could not only speak Spanish, but understands the procedure well enough to be able to explain it to him. You want I should just go in and pull back his covers and start inserting a catheter in his penis with no explanation? :rolleyes: Lab draws, IV starts, diagnostic tests-medications, hospital rules etc–all must be conveyed to the pt and his/her family. It is alot of complex information, sometimes necessarily given on the fly. No English is a huge barrier. Meanwhile, he has huge clots draining from his penis–and is scared to death.
As for the Cuban immigrants having it “pretty good”–now who’s ignorant? My college BF’s parents, both college educated: he cleaned schools. She worked in a dry cleaners–their college diplomas counted for nothing in 1962 Florida. :rolleyes:
You all can condescend and insult all you want. To be concerned about such a rapid influx of another culture and language is not inherently racist. Communication is different now, as is travel and its possibilities. America has always controlled the number of immigrants from other countries-just like every other country on the planet. I see nothing wrong with limits on immigrations; the devil is in the details.
Here is something I ponder: Why is America the answer to Mexico’s problems? That same program on NPR covered Mexican schools–basically they’re a shambles, with the majority of kids dropping out by 8th grade. This is not good for Mexico or America. Mexico could stop the corruption and nonsense that makes for poor government and screwing over the poor.
Thanks for the bit about the national anthem sung in Yiddish. I doubt, though, that the Yiddish version was intended as a protest song.
I don’t think that a qualified applicant should be denied the right to a job just because they do not know a minority language. Which minority language should they learn? In CA, should they learn Chinese or Spanish? Perhaps English?
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I never realized that having a brown skin lead to communication problems.
I’m on the “English-speaking” side of the argument. I also believe that if you allow any other additional language to become official, you should make it mandatory for every language on the planet to be recognized. In my neck of the woods, it’s now a Spanish/Korean thing. Who knows which language will be next?
It was possibly a bad metaphor, but please don’t put words in my mouth.
Why does the government or anyone else for that matter need to ‘recognize’ languages? What possible difference does having people around who speak other languages make to you? Surely you’re not arrogant enough to think they’re talking about you. I feel no need to provide accommodation for non-English speakers, and I expect none from them. If I can’t read the menu, I’ll go somewhere else or learn menu (French, Spanish, Turkish, whatever). If a foreigner wants to be wildly successful in America, then he/she will probably benefit from learning English, as that’s the language of business in this country. Otherwise, who gives a rat’s ass?
No, even better would be
Law and Order: Language Patrol
(Imagine a US version)
“In the United States, Language Purity is protexcted by two branches – the Language Police, who hunt down instances of foreign tongues, and the lawyers who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories”
Chuh-CHUNG!
te=eleanorigby]Baloney–NPR just had a special on a family from Waukegan IL-the mom brought the kids here illegally, Dad is here legally. Mom and kids went back to Mexico because Mom was homesick. She now regrets having done that because her kids are not getting a decent education. The people from work that are Mexican–most have family back there, kids, parents, cousins-every permutation of blood kin.
[/quote]
I have no doubt that there are families who leave their kids in Mexico. That’s not what I see here in the majority of cases where I’m close enough to know. YMMV, I guess.
Mexico has no shortage of passports or international flights. Neither does Chicago, for that matter. Maybe he’s been deported before–I don’t know, and I don’t know if that would change his story.
If your point is that waving Mexican flags won’t do much for their cause, well, you’re probably right. I would like to think that if I were a Mexican-American of some fashion I would wave both flags; then again, I might just wave the American flag as Mexico is one of the most heinously class-based and unequal public tragedies in our hemisphere.
Well, I guess this isn’t a big sticking point for me; I don’t really see choice of flags as that big a deal, but again, YMMV.
Fair enough. Maybe your hospital should be advertising in our (San Diego) colleges for nurses who speak Spanish. Do you see another solution here? I’m not being snarky, I’m genuinely curious.
Yeah, the peachy keen Cuban immigrant life sounded dubious to me too.
I don’t know who here has, but I don’t remember labeling anyone as racist here. I don’t remember intentionally implying it, though, although if there’s something I said that seems to imply it I’ll be glad to address that.
Well, sure. But almost every other decently developed country on the face of the planet (and many undeveloped countries) deals with multiple languages just fine. We’re just backwards. Have you ever traveled to another country which didn’t list English as an official language? I haven’t, although I’ve been to a country where the populace doesn’t really need to speak English except to interact with Americans/Brits/etc. (Israel) and almost everyone I saw there spoke it pretty darn well. The impression I get from anecdotes–which of course could be wrong or wrongly interpreted–is that countries that don’t list English as an official language are still pretty easy to get around for English-only speakers.
This I can get behind. And it brings us to one of the great questions of our time and place: How do we get Mexico to get serious about democracy and equal opportunity? I, for one, don’t have an answer. I do know that the people with any modicum of money there are stinky filthin’ rich and most of the rest are living paycheck-to-paycheck; I’ve heard from (illegal) immigrants that the daily living cost (groceries etc) is sometimes higher and the pay is slave-like. There was an article in the local paper recently about how Mexican monopolies run wild, barricading ships bringing competing products from other countries, and the politicians are ridiculously well off; the governor of BC Sur makes more money than Arnold Schwarzenegger, while “serving” (in the You Got Served sense 
) a fraction as many people.
Assuming makes an ass out of u and me.
Nobody has “the right” to be hired in any particular place. Depends on what kind of job they want and whom they intend to serve, anyway. Most programmers can get away with only knowing C and maybe Java, but a web programmer would do well to learn some combination of PHP/Perl/XML/Python/Java. A game programmer ought to learn how to use DirectX and a database programmer needs to learn a minority language too. A customer service rep in San Diego will have better job prospects if s/he speaks Spanish, and certain jobs in certain parts of San Francisco will be more easily earned if you speak Chinese. That’s how the free market–once the dearly beloved pet cause of the right–works: those who have the skills to serve their customers are more highly valued. This idea that there are legions of people who can’t get a job because they don’t speak Spanish is a ridiculous myth. Speaking a minority language is a point on your resume for some jobs, though.
I’m completely with you on this. If you want to get ahead, learn the language. This rule of thumb applies to anywhere in the world.
This is not aimed at arguing with eleanorigby, but I have a hard time believing anyone (let alone qualified nurses, who I am told are in short supply everywhere) can’t get a job in this country (with exceptions for some particular jobs, I’m sure) just because they do not speak Spanish, when I’ve dealt with many businesses who hire people to do customer service jobs but don’t seem to require that their employees speak intelligible English. I’m not a bigot, but it’s frustrating to be a customer and not be understood, dammit! I would expect to deal with this kind of frustration if I emigrated to Germany or France, but not in my home country.
I don’t see whats messed up about needing the skills to serve your clientle in order to get a job.
Anyways, this is America. As far as I am concerned, you can live however the heck you want, so long as you don’t harm other people. If you want to speak Spanish, knock yourself out. Obiously thats not a particularly smart decision to make if you want to get anywhere in this country. Hence the fact that immigrants, especially their children, learn English.
It’s worth noting that in countries with an official language, that language is often not what the majority of the population speaks. The most common situation for an official language is a multi-lingual country with a history of colonialism that speaks the colonial language in government as a legacy.