I meant to add that I agree with the assertion that the judge is wrong to order the woman to use birth control.
That’s far more pit worthy than forcing her to further her education and learn the dominant language.
OK, I’ve read the link on Yahoo (thank Zabali_Clawbane!). As I mentioned, I’ve studied a few languages and I’ve got a knack for them. I’ve no idea how closely related Mixtec, the mother’s native language, is to English or how much English she speaks, but expecting an 18 year old mother who’s presumably trying to care for her child and possibly earn a living (the article doesn’t say) to be able to speak English at a 4th grade level strikes me as a bit unreasonable. I’ve dug out an old textbook from when I was majoring in Japanese in college when I was 17. I’ve got it open to one of the last chapters we covered at the end of the first year, 2nd term, I think (college was a few years ago). Here’s a sample of the dialog I was expected to memorize, including grammar and vocabulary, in English, of course:
I’ve got no idea how that compares to 4th grade American English, but this is what it was considerable for a full-time college student to be able to read and understand towards the end of one year of study.
As for whether Hispanics are or aren’t learning English in the same way Poles and Slovaks are (I’m actually not sure they aren’t), I will point out that I don’t see “Wet Floor” signs in Polish or Italian, although one local bank’s ATMs offer the user a choice of seven languages, including Spanish, German, Italian, and Polish! From what I’ve read on the issue of bilingual education, if you talk to the parents, they want their kids to learn to speak English because it is the way to succeed in America. I gather it’s more a group of community activists who are pushing for bilingual education than the parents themselves.
There’s one other disclaimer I should put in. In addition to my experiences with becoming a U.S. citizen, many years ago while I was in Hawaii, I talked to a California company about a job. I mentioned that I was bilingual which was a considerable asset in Hawaii at the time (this was before the Japanese economy crashed). Unfortunately, the company I was talking to assumed this meant I spoke Spanish, not Japanese and offered me a lower salary because of it, possibly because they assumed English wasn’t my native language. It did rankle that an asset I was quite proud of attaining was treated as a detriment and this has affected my views on this subject.
CJ
I have a great deal of first hand knowledge of this topic. I teach English to adult speakers of other languages. Often this is refered to as “ESL” (English as a Second Language), but for many of my students English is their third, fourth, or fifth language.
Just a couple things I want to add to try to fight some ignorance here.
Many of the students I teach are refugees from Africa or East Asia. These people are resettled in the United States from a camp that usually has very few resources. I have met several students who were able to take English classes before they were resettled, but they are in the minority. Most people who come are more worried about surviving, and helping their families survive. Taking English classes (even if they are available, which usually they aren’t) isn’t something they are able to do.
Certainly, if I were going to move to Spain, I would take Spanish classes, get some tapes, read some books, etc. But these people do not have the same resources that I do. I cannot hold them to the same standards.
Secondly, even adults that want to learn English have a hard time getting into classes. My state has a great ABE (Adult Basic Education) delivery system that is fairly well funded in comparison to other states and we still have waiting lists. The President’s recent budget proposes a 66% cut in federal dollars for ABE, which will result in even longer waiting lists.
In addition, you have to consider all the other barriers that adult students have when learning English. If you don’ t have transportation or child care you can’t get to classes in the first place. If you can get to class, but you have only a 2nd or 3rd grade education in your native country, you are going to have a much harder time learning English than someone who has completed high school or university. Literacy in one’s first language directly impacts one’s ability to learn another language. This is why we encourage the parents in our Family Literacy program to speak and read to their child in their first language. If they are literate in Spanish (or Arabic or Somali) they will have an easier time learning English when they reach elementary school.
And, like I said before, if you are worried about how you are going to feed your family or care for your sick baby or mother, or any of the other worries my students have, you are going to have a hard time learning. I try to make my classes relevant and immediately useful, but those affective barriers have to come down before my students can make progress.
I think that’s enough for now. Perhaps this has no place in the Pit – I am very thin skinned and probably won’t post again if things get heated – but I thought I would try.
From here :
So, the judge never said “learn English or else”. He merely “insisted” that she take language classes. Is anyone against that?
It was stated in this thread that the United States is going to be a multilingual society. No, it won’t, if present trends continue. It will become (and probably already is) several monolingual societies that happen to occupy the same territory. The vast majority of native speakers of English have little incentive to learn a foreign language, because the language of business, education and government is and will continue to be English, and the supply of new immigrants is large enough that the number of non-English speakers will keep rising, even if current immigrants stop demanding the right not to learn English. There is no such thing as a society composed of people who cannot understand one another.
We should probably reel in that particular line of utterly trumped outrage just a little. A lot of parents choose not to immunize, to selectively immunize and/or to immunize on a vastly different schedule than is suggested by academic medical authorities. (I’m one of them, and I can introduce you to a dozen more without having to think hard.) When those parents are middle (or upper) class, reasonably educated and English speakers, it’s viewed as a choice which they, as parents, are within their rights to make. If this judge (and the child welfare agency in Lebanon, TN) is to be believed, when a parent doesn’t immunize because no one has explained the matter to her in a way that she can understand so that she can make an informed choice, it makes her a bad parent who should lose her child. I know for a fact that every year there are a number of children in New York City who are not permitted to enroll for kindergarten because their immunizations are not up to standard but no one sics child welfare on these families, even though the parents in question do speak English and have no excuse for their failure to immunize nor ethical or religious objections to the practice.
This woman was probably only in the system because she was being served by WIC or some other benefit program, and charges were brought because she missed medical appointments which is what led to the lack of immunizations. I don’t know about the transportation system nor the Mextico support community in Lebanon, TN but I know that a lot of the young women I dealt with in the mentoring program I ran in New York City, English speakers all, missed medical appointments all the time, because they couldn’t find someone to take care of their other children or because they didn’t have the money for a bus or subway to get to the clinic and didn’t have someone that they could ask for a ride. Even if this woman understood when she was supposed to be at the doctor’s office with her child, she may have had substantial problems in getting there, and no ability to call to reschedule, because of the language barrier.
None of that makes this woman an unfit parent, nor is it sufficient reason for a judge to threaten to remove her child if she doesn’t comply with his completely unrealistic schedule to meet an arbitrary goal which will only serve to improve the child’s position in the most minimal of fashions. If a parent who speaks no English is a threat, a parent who speaks fourth grade English is still not as fit as a parent who speaks eighth grade or twelfth grade English. That in itself points toward a considerable double standard that has plainly prejudicial roots. This is the south, and I’m from the south so I know that even now, there are plenty of parents who come through this man’s courtroom who were born and raised probably right there in that county who have a tenuous grasp on the English language and minimal education. If none of them have been ordered to improve their linguistic skills or return to school in order to retain custody, and to do so within a specific time period, then there’s no reason why that should’ve been the first (rather than last) resort for this mother.
As CRich said, there used to be a standard that children stayed with their parents and got assistance from various welfare agencies unless there was substantial evidence that there was risk of harm. Having a parent who doesn’t speak the predominant language of the greater community certainly presents challenges but it doesn’t make the child sick, it doesn’t pose any quantifiable danger. And it certainly presents considerably less danger than the trauma this child will face if removed from the only home he’s ever known and put into the care of strangers when there is nothing wrong with him, his home or his mother except for a language issue. The best interests of a child never include removal from a safe, loving home.
Hear! Hear! (Read! Read!?)
And there will always be Americans who can only speak one language. Their numbers, however, may be dwindling. As may their opportunities. There are a lot of places in America where speaking another language would come in real handy. Places like California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, New York and on and on…
Now I agree with you that someone coming here ought to learn english. But I think that the day IS coming to Southern California where a person will need to be able to speak at least 2 languages if a person wants to be successful.
Dumb cocksucker, who said that? How did you glean this bit of wisdom from my post, pray tell…
Uhhh, well, duh. THey are in the US, the home of the free and the brave. Free from the government telling them what to say, how to say it, what language to practice, Etc. Yes, even though you cinsider them scum, they are still adults and still have the prerogative to learn English or not.
Because aside from the purposes of becoming a citizen, our government doesn’t ask them to voluntarily or non-voluntarily learn English. WHat gets me is the fucking attitude people of your ilk show towards immigrants and it tends to come out when we talk about language for some odd reason. Why do you give a fuck what language they speak at all?
So she should learn english or leave? WTF is that? You’re a fucking bigot with the intellect of a caveperson. You should learn to respect people even if they don’t speak your native tongue, or you should leave.
FIrst of all, it’s not a demand for shit, it’s a desperate cry to show that you’re still better than them immigrants, even though their numbers are increasing and yours are decreasing. Secondly, courtesy has nothing to do with it and bigotry has everything to do with it.
They don’t come here to lick your boots and suck your dick or to remain in prostrate to you, the all-powerful White American. They come here to try to eke out a better life for themselves and it’s people like you who would rather see them dirt-poor, living in hovels picking your fucking vegetables and going home to Mexico when not needed anymore.
Fucking simpleton.
Sam
Maybe you did, but it’s not terribly apparent that any of it penetrated your obviously too-thick fucking skull. Nobody has yet to assert something as stupid as the US requiring compulsory multi-language learning for every citizen(though one could argue that those who are college-educated already are).
Myself and others have simply asserted that in the next 20-50 years, unless we boot out all of the ethnic groups that have immigrated in the last few decades, we will be multi-lingual. If not officially, then definitely unofficially as these enclaves expand and their culture becomes more ingrained in ours. It’s a foregone conclusion, and denying that is just as ignorant as much of your stance in this thread.
Sam
Five flavours of bullshit.
While Canada is only officially bilingual, in Vancouver alone there are many communities where it’s common to find non-english (or french) speaking people. People who are working and thriving, as a matter of fact. Mandarin and Cantonese, Punjabi, Amharic, Portuguese, Farsi.
These people aren’t told “Assimilate or we’ll take your children.” That’s fucking inhuman. “Learn English or bugger off” isn’t much better.
Some businesses do take measures to accomodate non-english-speaking people. My credit union, for example, provides services in six languages. That’s their prerogative. They’re not being forced to-- they recognize that there’s a benefit to recognizing our multiculturalism.
Now, in this woman’s town, only 1 in 50 people speak her language. That provides plenty of motivation to either learn the majority language or move somewhere where there’s a bigger hispanic community. It’ll get itself worked out.
A judge forcing someone to learn English as a condition of keeping their child is monstrous, and yes, bigoted.
Sorry, to me, the “melting pot” American society that is often referred to as though it’s a great thing sounds like a horrible metaphor and a worse model. Who wants a homogenous culture?
How do you say that in Choctaw, again?
I agree…I truly don’t think the judge is a bigot (nor do I think you’re a bigot). And I also agree that he’s just trying to help, but I don’t think it’s the judge’s place to create that requirement. Especially since it’s a ridiculously difficult requirement to fulfill.
If the judge is really concerned about the woman and the health of her child, send her the friggin’ immunization notice in Spanish. It’ll take about 15 minutes to translate it from English. There are about 1,200 Latinos in the community that could easily do it. Sure beats terminating her parental rights.
PS I read this story to my Honduran girlfriend and she went absolutely ballistic. Her parents do not speak English, but they did a wonderful job of raising her. (She is now a registered nurse and completely bi-lingual.) Our kids will also be bi-lingual. And yes, I am learning Spanish, not because the government is ordering me to, but because I want to. Get the difference?
Spoken like a true immigration enthusiast. On the one hand, immigrants are all noble, hardworking people who embody the American ideal of self-sufficiency. On the other hand, waaah! Waah! The government should give the poor helpless immigrants welfare, free lunches, free health care, and free translation services! People who need the courts to force them to take care of their kids should go the fuck home and take their problems with them. No, I’ve got a better idea! They can move in with you, since you think they’re so great!
Read what the judge said, not what the lawyer/whiner said. There was no condition. So untwist your panties, all of you.
Two problems here. First, there are hundreds of languages spoken in homes in the U.S. I don’t want my taxes going to pay for an army of translators and interpreters just so immigrants can avoid becoming Americans. There are probably plenty of laws on the books written in English that are hard to understand. It’s not incumbent on the government to pay a lawyer to explain them to me. Second problem is that most of those 1,200 Latinos probably can’t speak English anyway. If the Latino community wants not to speak English, it can set up its own translation service. This whining lawyer wants his people not to have to learn English, but he wants taxpayers to pay for the inconvenience. If he were really interested in solving the problem, he’d cut the Jesse Jackson media crap and set up a translation service.
:rolleyes:
Cite, please.
Even the Director of Metro Nashville Public Schools is Hispanic. (Forty miles from Lebanon.)
Earlier I asked for more information on all of those awful decisions by Tennessee judges. I don’t deny that we’ve had some. I would just like to know which ones the OP had in mind in making his post. If I missed the response, please point me in that direction. If the OP didn’t really have any cases in mind, that was a rather careless and mean remark.
Tea Elle, that was a really fine post.
Really? I’ve never heard anyone use Latino or Latina in describing what they were or someone else was. Just Mexican, Spanish, or Hispanic and that includes hundreds of hispanics in Texas and New Mexico.
Yeah, me too. My Colombian friend calls himself “Colombian” and only Colombian, but wouldn’t mind Hispanic. I think he looked at people a bit weirdly when they called him latino.
Let’s see:
My panties remain twisted.
:rolleyes:
Don’t put words in my mouth. Asking someone to learn the language of the country they where voluntarily immigrated is about helping them expand their job opportunities and horizons. It’s certainly not about being racist.
No one is asking them to stop speaking their native language.
Since in most cases you can’t live here forever and you do have have to become a citizen in order to stay here you do have to learn English.
I care when I can’t communicate with a dear friend because she lives with her mother who speaks a handful of English words despite living in the US for over a decade. I care since I nearly witnessed my neighbor’s child taken away because she hired a babysitter who didn’t speak English and couldn’t communicate with the police. My mother cares since she finds it constantly interferes with her ability to teach well.
It’s really not asking that much to take lessons for a year or two.
If American moved to another country and didn’t bother to learn that other country’s dominant language I doubt you’d feel so indifferent towards their actions.
How is it bigoted to ask someone to learn at least the rudiments of the language of a place they voluntarily moved to?
The bigotry is the other way around. Hey, I moved here and who cares if we can’t communicate.
Again, how is bigoted to ask someone to learn to communicate with the majority of the people in a place they voluntarily moved to?
Sam, I am neither male nor white so grow the fuck up. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a KKK member. And part of “making a better life for yourself” means learning the language of the country you’ve chosen to live in.
If you can’t understand that fact, you’re the simpleton.
Most of my friends are either immigrants or first generation. They happen to agree with me.
Suppose the judge had asked the teenaged mother in question to get a GED. Would everyone start screaming then?
Thank you. 
I know this is the pit but I swear to God I’m a little shocked at all the bile hurled at me in this thread.
:eek:
I honestly don’t hate anyone aside from my in-laws and certain politicians. In fact I grew up next door to an immigrant community. To this day I love Russian and Indian food.
But I just think this girl’s life would be improved enormously if she would learn English. I went on a honeymoon to a Central American country and studied Spanish for six months before we left. I can’t imagine moving to another country and not taking the opportunity to immerse yourself in another language.