Learn English, Dammit!

[SoCalDem]

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you why this dog won't hunt.

Where will the additional teachers come from to TEACH these adults English?
Where will the money come from to PAY these teachers?
Where will the non-english-speakers find the time to take the classes?
Will children be denied education until they learn it?
Will 9 yr old first graders be acceptable?...22 yr old high school sophomores?
How many new-hires will it take to monitor all these English-class students' progress?
What if they fail their class? Will they be bused to Tijuana?


My high school friend's last name was Stavropolous.. His parents never learned much more english than "Come, sit, you EAT"... they owned a home free and clear (a small one, but still it was theirs). His dad always had a job, and his mother did seamstress work at home.

This whole immigration debacle is little more than our Georgie-boy sticking his ham-hand into yet another beehive, and then watching us all get stung over and over.. He's the only one with protective clothing here.. he always hides behind "bad advice".."unstable information"..nothing is ever his fault..

Here's hoping a few bees go up his pantleg :)

[DBoon]

1. the same way homeless people get their MBA

through determination, hard work, and discipline - with no help from anyone else.

Just like everyone else who is wealthy earned their fortune (Paris Hilton for example)

(sarcasm icon probably unnecessary)

[LuckyLib]

17. Would this be the same way that below average students get

into Yale, screw around, play pretend soldier and then attend Harvard Bizz School? Hmmm, I thought so. Pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Yesindeed.

[DBoon]

49. yes!

you choose your parents carefully.

The secret to success. It is all by individual initiative.

[serryjw]

2. Why is everyone pandering

You want to come to America? You believe it is the land of opportunity? How many will get out of the Spanish getto without learning English?
I met a man (35?) petitioning last week. From Spain, married an American woman, knew ZERO English 11 months ago. In 11 months learned enough English that we could communicate.

[SoCalDem]

9. I am not pandering... I think English is important

and i would never think of moving to another country without learning their language..BUT..and it;s a BIG BUT..

We have never before REQUIRED english, and for DECADES have gone out of our way to accomodate people who come here without knowing it..

To make a sea change hastily is to invite problems..

I have always thought that a better way would have been to incvlude english classes as part of any naturalization process, but there will always be people who can and will manage without english.. There's a town not far from my hometown...in KANSAS.. where Swedish is still spoken and some of the older folks rarely if ever spoke english..

This whole kerfluffle is strictly an anti-Mexican movement...put forth by people who never minded much when the 90's were clipping along with signing bonuses for job-seekers, and there were more jobs than applicants..

It's fearmongering and xenophobia.. If they could sterilize the imported young Mexicans at the border, republicans would invite them all in.. Xenophobes fear "dark" people.. it's in their genes.. they have a fear chromosome... a big one..

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. I couldn't help noticing

that no one in Portland ever complained about all the Russians who couldn't speak English, even though the bus system and the Kaiser clinics made Russian-language materials available and the health department posted signs in Russian warning people not to eat fish from the Willamette River after a sewage spill, and there were Russian programs on cable access.

I guess it's okay if blondes don't speak English. :evilgrin:

[YOY]

41. I haven't met many Russians who have not learned a little

No chestno govorj, uchits Anglsiki ne trudno i bolshe bezplatno!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. But you also don't see Anglos complaining loud and long about

the Russian signs in the clinics.

The right-wing propaganda is that there's a vast army of Mexican immigrants outright refusing ever to learn English. That's simply not true of the Mexicans any more than it is of any other large immigrant group.

But no one is complaining about other types of immigrants.

[YOY]

52. Other types of immigrants don't have automatic options attached on

every 1-800 number... Signs everywhere that are in a language that they thought that they did not need to know to live here.

Granted there is racism coming from the ignorami in the right, but I know some other immigrants who have voiced their opinion to me that they feel the Latin community is not so keen to integrating because so many things are provided to them and there is little motivation to become part of society. (I teach ESL at nights to immigrants at a local private school.)

In the words of one Mongolian immigrant that I teach ESL "Just what needs this country, more people only speak one language." (grammar mistakes included purposefully...yes I corrected him, but the thought stuck with me.

[RebelOne]

53. I had a next door neighbor from Ukraine.

He spoke excellent English, plus he knew 5 other languages.

[treestar]

3. If it is part of an amnesty, fly by night schools spring up

They did in '86. Though they didn't work too well.

They are not needed as people learn on their own.

This is all Bushit.

[Raine]

4. I wonder how people

learned English around the turn of the last century, surely they didn't go to school to do it. :shrug: Really I'm curious, they must have picked it up from around the neighborhood or shops or something.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. There WERE English classes early in the twentieth century

They were night school classes offered by the public school systems in major cities. That's how my maternal grandfather, an immigrant from Latvia, learned English, which was, by the way, his fifth language, after Latvian, Russian, German, and French. He eventually taught nighttime English classes for immigrants through the Minneapolis public schools.

[Raine]

15. Oh THANKS

I really didn't know. My grandparents were from Norway and spoke perfect English, I guess that's how they learned it.

[CTyankee]

27. settlement houses

At least in the big cities. Now we have another version of settlement houses. AT least we do in New Haven. So nothing is very new.

I work for LIteracy Volunteers part time in New Haven. My beat is the local ESOL classes. We get a lot done, in tandem with one of the modern settlement houses in the city. The others are a pastiche of church basement, Adult Ed, a school with classes for the parents, and refugees who have a preferred alien status in the U.S. It is a hodge podge, but we press on.

If this admin. thought literacy was a priority, there would be NO PROBLEM in funding all of our programs!!!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. THANK YOU!

This is such a red herring.

The VAST MAJORITY of immigrants learn English, and those who don't usually have some good reason, such as grueling work schedules.

And for those who don't, well, why should it bother anyone?

What's with these people who get upset to hear groups of immigrants talking among themselves in their native language? I speak Japanese on a professional level, but when I get together with other Americans in Tokyo, we speak English, and no Japanese person has ever given us grief for it.

I've seen posters cite the existence of non-English-speaking teenagers as "proof" that immigrants aren't learning English. Well, if you're judging this by random people you see on the bus, how do you know how long that teenager has been in America?

In fact, a more common problem is immigrant children refusing to speak their parents' language and being ashamed of their parents.

I think of the Korean couple who ran my favorite sandwich shop in Portland. They knew just enough English to take orders and handle money, but their children who sat in the shop doing homework after school, spoke to each other and to their parents exclusively in English.

I think of the immigrant teens who used to ask to use the phone at the radio station where I volunteered (it was housed in a high school building). In fact, I didn't know they were immigrants until they dialed the phone, and had a conversation in Russian or Vietnamese, only to turn around and say to the other teens waiting for them something like, "My mom says it's cool."

I think of the time I was walking down the street in the small Oregon town where I lived for seven years and saw three brown-skinned children, all grade school age, playing in the front yard--in English. Since there was an Indian reservation nearby, I assumed they were Native American--until their mother appeared on the front steps and called them in for lunch in Spanish.

I think of my great-great grandparents who came over from Germany to join their married daughter (my great-grandmother) after they retired from running a hotel. They never learned English, but that was fine, because they were in a huge extended family, and there were plenty of other German immigrants around. My great-grandparents, who had been in the States for fifty years by the time I was born, managed to pick up the most basic English skills and nothing more, but somehow they managed to live a middle-class life. My grandmother and her siblings were required to speak German at home, but they all became English-dominant. My mother was English dominant, but she learned enough household German to communicate with the old folks.

Maybe the DUers who don't work in education aren't aware of how many kids with Spanish-surnames and Latino faces do not speak Spanish.

Anyway, as a language professional (former college professor, current translator), I find the linguistic ignorance and linguistic chauvinism appalling.

No one is saying that immigrants shouldn't learn English. They should, and free English classes should be provided. But if they don't, that's their problem and not yours.

[SoCalDem]

14. And when they DO learn english, it still won't be good enough

There's always that ACCENT... and while they're at it..lose the black hair and the tawny skin.. and change your name to a good old american name ..like Tiffany or Joshua....and stop being so short.. :sarcasm:

[LuckyLib]

19. Excellent information, Lydia. This is my field as well, and you

hit every example of the process of learning English and becoming American in the U.S. My favorite myth is "My grandparents learned English in three short weeks when they arrived from _________." No, actually they didn't. The local economy supported their back-breaking labor and strong desire to better their lives by being very happy with farmers, steelworkers, factory workers, etc using their first languages while learning what little English they might need. It's their children who made the move between the two languages and cultures, learning English and moving up in the world. It's a very complex, fascinating field, and the simplistic jingo that folks spout is really amusing. Language is personal to all of us, so we all have an opinion . . . just as everyone knows exactly how our public schools should function (even if they aren't educators!). Great post.

[serryjw]

21. This is NOT a red herring

Everyone is so busy quoting me the experiences of their ancestors from 50-100 years ago. Like it or not, this is NOT the same country, not the same world, not the same challenges, not the same opportunities. Anyone who thinks this is racial is deliberating stirring the pot. We have a large middle class Hispanic population in this country, as we do Black. I think it is great.
YOU want them to be minimum wage slaves, I don't. I want them to have the same opportunities that their intelligence and drive will take them.I want them to be able to contribute to build our society. We have enough problems with MSM. Do you KNOW HOW the issues are reported on Spanish TV? We have NO chance to debunk anything if we can not communicate.
Language is the unifying force in society, NOT color, NOT race or religion. IF I can NOT communicate with someone they will always be an outsider looking in.

[SoCalDem]

22. Our government needs to communicate with the EMPLOYERS

FIRST..

Communicate with them about a real JAIL sentence for offering undercut wages to undocumented workers ..as a wedge to get the US workers to fear loss of jobs if they do not take less wages..only to still lose their jobs because boss decides he can get even cheaper workers if he moves the company..

If the laws on the books were enforced, the "problem" would work itself out..

The job is the "hook".. Fish without a hook, and you starve..

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. So what do we do, beat immigrants over the head for not speaking

English the moment they arrive, or provide funding for sufficient English classes?

You seem to prefer the former.

And if you care so much about how the Spanish-language media are portraying the political scene, you can always study Spanish.

By the way, campaigning in immigrant languages is nothing new. Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of NYC in the 1930s, based much of his popularity on his ability to campaign in both Italian and Yiddish. It would be like a modern-day politician being able to campaign in Spanish and Chinese.

In La Guardia's day, there were neighborhoods where you could go for blocks and hear only Yiddish or only Italian. There were newspapers in those languages, and radio stations.

Most of the Latino immigrants will remain in low-level jobs if they had low-level jobs in the Old Country. It's hard for ADULTS to move up socially. But a surprising number will start businesses catering to their own communities (It's happening here in Minneapolis) and will work hard to achieve a middle-class lifestyle without knowing much English. Whether they stay in the lower class or move up, or arrive having been members of the middle class in their own countries, they will work hard to see that their CHILDREN go to school and enter the middle class, and they will do better, on average, than native-born Anglos.

[serryjw]

34. Robert Reich disagrees

with you. He was interviewed on TV and said that 1% of Americans will be able to change their social status going forward. IF you are born into a poor family, you will live and die in that status.
Learning English for citizenship HAS BEEN part of of the process for years, it's nothing new.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. And who's saying that they shouldn't learn English?

Geeze!

And if only 1% of Americans change their social status, then it doesn't matter whether they learn English or not, right?

If somebody was a semi-literate tenant farmer in Mexico (perhaps speaking only a Native language instead of Spanish) and comes to the States as an adult, simply learning English won't do much for him economically, because he'll have to work to support his family. But his children can go to school, get scholarships and move into the middle class.

In my observation, immigrants probably have a higher rate of upward mobility than native-born Anglos because they're more determined and have more community support. (Maybe you've heard about the financial cooperatives that Asian immigrants have.)

[Lady Effingbroke]

46. "Maybe the DUers who don't work in education aren't aware of how many kids

with Spanish-surnames and Latino faces do not speak Spanish."

The young couple who live across the street from me are Hispanic, yet do not speak (and understand very little) Spanish; and I once worked with several young Hispanic people who spoke English only.

They all said that their parents wanted them to learn English, so the young people were encouraged to speak English and the speaking of Spanish was frowned upon.

[Poiuyt]

6. These people think everyone should learn English

[Raine]

13. LOL

love the no "amnety" sign. :silly:

You would think the idiots could look up the proper spelling before putting their ignorance on display for all to see. Years back when my health was better and I used to protest it was a rule that you made sure you had all words spelled correctly, of course being liberals that wasn't much of a problem to do. ;)

[BringEmOn]

26. No 'Amnety' for these Morans!

[imlost]

48. nice. n/t

[Turn CO Blue]

7. We haven't spoken "English" in America in roughly 200 years.

[Turn CO Blue]

8. Welcome to America. Now learn to speak Navajo, dammit!

[Warpy]

10. I have a cousin who does ESL classes in Calfiornia

and she has a very long waiting list.

They WANT to learn the language.

Yes, they'll use their birth language at home and they'll always be more comfortable speaking it. So what?

[gollygee]

12. It is very difficult for adults to learn a second language

and it just asn't a reasonable expectation

[LuckyLib]

20. Yes it is. If it weren't so difficult, all the millions of folks who

took three years of high school foreign language study should be fluent by now.

[yorkiemommie1]

18. i work in Adult ESL program

the classes are state mandated ( paid by state funds )

most of the ESL programs have morning, afternoon, evening and distance learning options.

the above options are so that they can juggle classes and all of their other obligations;many of the students find it a challenge even so. a lot of them drop out and drop back in months or even years later. i had one woman enroll today who had been in our school ten years ago and is back here to visit.


we have a mixture of asians, many of whom are corporate wives, older folks who live w/ their adult children, and younger hispanics. the younger asians usually have taken english in their own countries and so can read and write ( beautiful handwriting ) better than they can speak; the hispanics can speak more than they can read and write - while we have some who have graduated hs and college, many have only had the first 6 yrs of schooling and a few even less.

some people take our placement class w/in 24 hours of getting off the plane from Asia; some people try to take classes while here on vacation ( that always surprises us since we would be at Disneyland instead ).

our classes range from basic literacy to college prep.

children are assessed by the school district in a different program .
there is additional help for them, although our district has treated that help very poorly.

there are assessment programs run by the state which deliver $$ for benchmarks reached by each student - there is some internal skepticism about this as it seems as if there is teaching to the test just to generate additional funds to our program.

imho, there should be at least a token charge for the program but that won't happen in this state.

[CTyankee]

28. I work for LIteracy Volunteers in New Haven

and I have come to the belief that we SHOULD teach to the test, which in Connecticut is a life skills test. I believe that our partners in teaching want it that way. For instance, we partner with the Interfaith Refugee Ministries program and they are anxious that their clients get jobs as soon as possible in this country. Basic skills in living day to day will help their clients a great deal. The Life Skills CASAS test, for all of its flaws for being out of date, is a good one for that.

[yorkiemommie1]

35. the state questioned our results

because our scores were too high. we have CASAS and EL CIVICS. the state questioned our 'too perfect' results on the latter. Now there is the adjusting of the test ( which our ELCIVICS people devise using state guidelines ) so as to give more accurate results.

[CTyankee]

54. Hmm, we've not experienced that particular problem

Sometimes our students go down in their score from their earlier test (we pre and post test each student during each fiscal year). If a student diligently attends class his/her score generally goes up, as you would expect. But many of our students find that impossible.

[alarimer]

23. I think some people assume you can just learn English

by osmosis or something. That may work for young kids but not for adults. Some adults may never become fluent. Are we supposed to expect every immigrant to know English before they even get here? Okay a little bit will definitely help them but most folks need to be taught; they can't just pick it up.

[kskiska]

44. Some never pick it up

especially if they're illiterate in their native countries. My friend has taught ESL to migrant workers (peach pickers) in SC and it's very difficult for them to learn sentence structure, nouns, verbs, etc., if they can't read or write any language at all.

[Maestro]

24. I like this post but really the right is just blathering on about

nothing. Immigrants are learning English faster than ever before per the latest census.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/can-pop.htm

[El Fuego]

25. ¡hable español, dammit!

[CTyankee]

29. Literacy Volunteers in your community

That's who will teach immigrants English.

I work part time for LV in New Haven and ESOL is my area of expertise. We offer classes in 6 places in the city and staff them with volunteers. These are people who are dedicated to helping others learn English and thrive in our community.

The fact of the matter is that Bush has cut, not increased, literacy programs at the national level when he could have increased them. Even though his own mother was a "big" proponent of literacy back in her husband's day in the WH.

Well, there you have it. In our capitalist society, the best we can hope for is volunteers from businesses and some do=gooders until the light dawns on some people in government that we need to do more to educate our workforce who is falling woefully behind.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

31. As if the "english only" people...

actually care about the immigrants learning english.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. If they did, they'd be pestering their Congresscritters to

fund ESL programs in every community. But that would take away the fun of having an excuse for xenophobia.

[Raine]

33. Yeah really

they use the language thing as an excuse but the real reason is they just don't want 'those people' here, they don't fool me. :mad:

[ComerPerro]

37. "English only" is embraced mostly by those whose only real

sense of accomplishment is that they learned English as a child...

[yorkiemommie1]

38. yep

n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. Well if one grew up in a Country where english was the common language

why the diss? I don't think we should be dissed if we only know one language, in a Country that mostly has English as it's common language, should we? I am not an "English only" person. I think knowing multiple languages is a very good thing. I just wasn't privy to learning multiple languages. Well excuse the hell out of me!

[NuttyFluffers]

42. One of my favorite modern native american stories...

There was an "English Only!" movement sweeping Montana. People were getting all swept up in this political fervor, essentially enjoying the encoded racism that went with it. There were claims to make English the only language of the state, all other languages would no longer be allowed to be spoken by state employees during work hours, or materials be printed, recorded, etc in another language besides English.

So great hatred and false pride was being stirred up, basically ensuring another conservative election, who naturally supported the divisiveness. And so, as the story goes, they held a city hall meeting in Helena, where the governor and many other state representatives would be present. There were large groups of the public, including those for and against this resolution. The flames were fanned into a storm. At the most dramatic point of this conflagration, where prejudice and antagonism was on the verge of winning the day, up stepped forward the chief of one of the tribes resident within Montana's borders. He wanted to speak at the open mike.

He was dressed in full chieftan clothing, this being an important gathering like any council, and in quiet dignity stood before the microphone. Once he had the floor to speak he waited until all the voices quieted down from their previous rancor. The room hushed to hear what he had to say. There was expectation that he was going to be against this resolution, so there was a lot of antagonistic looks directed his way. He starts to speak, all attention upon him.

"I have been listening to your arguments, from both sides, about this. The idea to change this to an English only state, and have all materials by state, county, and city reflect that, is a powerful one to enact. I have thought on this, and have come to a conclusion. This is a good idea, it should be done." The room audibly gasps, it's the last thing they expected to hear! "We should begin this process with the name of this state, and then continue on down. Thank you."

A stunned silence grows into a pregnant pause. The leaders of the state look at each other, knowing exactly what they are thinking. Renaming the state, and all its papers, recordings, court records, etc. alone would cost millions upon millions of dollars. To continue on down with all counties and cities as well is beyond the scope of any state budget. Life would be completely overhauled, and all for a bit of vanity. The council vote was made not to put this resolution to ballot by unanimous decision and the topic was not brought up again among the higher halls of power...

*** it's a happy story i learned from my NA teacher, who was from a small tribe in Montana. i forget when it took place, and any exact names that went with it, but this was what was told me. i'm sure if i spent the time i might find truth, and falsehood, in the details. but the main spirit of the story is a wisdom that shouldn't be overlooked.

it's time to stop being played for suckers by conservatives with their lame wedge issues. the instant response to this, and all other issues that don't show the hypocrisy and evil of this conservative leadership that is destroying all of our lives, should be "Lame Wedge Issue - i'm not buyin'"

[proud2BlibKansan]

40. K&R That last bit about the bees - that alone gets this nominated!

:rofl:

[Bouncy Ball]

43. Can I inject a bit of real-world experience with

second language learners, as Lydia and Maestro have done so well?

I taught kids in middle school who were second language learners. Their parents were, too. Sometimes their GRANDparents were struggling to learn English, too. I also volunteered to teach free English classes to adults at night, as well as GED classes.

This myth that there are immigrants who REFUSE to learn English is just that: a myth. Why in the world would you risk your life to go to another country and then NOT want to learn the language? That's crazy!

So of course they WANT to, let's get that out of the way.

In fact, with the kids, it goes even further than that. They "Anglo-cize" their name (Jaime becomes Jamie, for instance), they refuse to ADMIT they can speak Spanish (and they say it with a heavy accent "I don't espeak no espanish, miss!"). They want to lose their language, their culture, their heritage as quickly as possible. (Remember, I'm talking about teenagers.) I find that sad, especially considering the fact that they would have an easier time finding a job and possibly make more money if they are bilingual. If they learn English, and lose their Spanish, well, that's a true loss.

But they feel SHAMED by their native language. Hmmm, I wonder why? (Eyes rolling here.)

This is really a non-issue and a non-problem. Most of the people who never succeeded too well in learning English fluently were the elderly generation. They just tend to rely on the younger generations to translate for them and they get along fine. The middle and younger generations learn English, some of them very quickly (it's called immersion, if you were dropped in the middle of France all of a sudden, you'd pick up some French fairly quickly too, LOL!).

I don't understand why Congress would spend a moment's time on this. There are English language classes in place almost everywhere you go around here, and even if they can't get to them (they are free, btw), there's always TV. I've had many a student whose first words in English were things like Coke and McDonald's and Target, etc.

They learn English. This is a non-issue.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

50. That was certainly true in rural Oregon

The Latinos who were capable of it tried to become invisible. One of our part-time Spanish instructors (at the college) was also a certified alcoholism counselor who ran a support group for teenagers with alcoholic parents. She said that the Latino kids would claim to be Italian, Native American, light-skinned African-American, anything but Mexican, and who could blame them in an area where there was so much prejudice against them?

[Cleita]

56. Back in the forties and fifties, my mother, a Chilean, always

claimed she was Italian and even went to night school to learn Italian. She often got pissed off with me when I wouldn't go along with her little charade. She also used to lighten my hair so I would look more like my classmates and less hispanic. I didn't look very hispanic anyway but she wanted to make sure.

[SoCalDem]

57. How sad.. I had a friend who was Argentinian

and had a german surname (not that unusual), and people refused to believe that she was "hispanic"..One teacher commented that she looked "white" :grr:

I am half Cuban, but since my grandparents were born in Spain and France, am I really half Cuban because my father was born in Havana, of Spanish and French parents??

Nationality is an odd thing, isn't it?

[Cleita]

58. My mother's family is Spanish too. They immigrated from Spain.

However, my grandfather, I'm sure had a lot of Moorish in him because if you put arab clothes on him, he would fit right in although he came from Catalan.

People don't realize that Latin American nations have had their share of immigrants and are also melting pots. Your Argentinian friend isn't unusual either in Argentina, Chile or Paraguay. Many Germans settled there in the nineteenth century, particularly Pomeranians.

I had a blond American friend, who was teaching in Chile. She told me that going to the Osorno region in Chile she fit right in because the majority of the people were fair and blond like she was. It doesn't make them superior to the Native American mixes that are in the mainstream though. I needed to clear that up.

[Cleita]

55. Every "crisis" in this administration since 9-11 has been

a non-issue and non-problem created by appealing to the xenophobia and unfounded fears of the electorate. Then they build on it with meaningless talking points until everyone is repeating the same nonsense like a flock of parrots. The "stay the course" point for example was even parroted by the First Lady recently in an interview that had nothing to do with anything remotely connected to it.

[Cleita]

45. So whose the lucky teacher who is going to teach

English to *W?

Can we ask him to resign because he doesn't speak English good enough to govern?

[KingFlorez]

47. Language is just a different way of saying words

When it comes down to it, people should learn the language of the place they live in to advance for work and other things, but other than the logical aspect of necessity, language isn't that big a deal.