Bilingual Education

[Nightshade]

I know, I'm making a general comment, not busting your huevos. Read my first post.

[menkent]

ignore the (non)problem of immigrants. americans don't really want the hispanic population to learn english... if they did we'd have to stop treating them like slave labor.

american schools should start with bilingual education in elementary school for one reason: GLOBALIZATION. let the plebians stop taking FL classes once they're old enough to have resigned themselves to a life of wage labor. we'll be generous and let them pretend like they're middle class though- it makes them easier to manipulate if they think they have something to lose.

[menkent]

I think you misread my statement. In other countries, the local language as well as another one is taught throughout primary and secondary education.

not to be picky, but the second language they learn is very rarely the country's minority language. nobody learns turkish in germany, arabic or whatever in france or the uk, etc. they all learn french, spanish, or engrish... maybe all three. they're not learning new languages to be able to order food at mcdonalds and actually get their order right or tell their gardeners where to plant the new sago palm, they're doing it to be more thoroughly european. can't speak for asia, but i suspect they're learning engrish for professional (and possibly colonial) reasons.

[Ryoki]

Fuck that. You move to my country, learn to speak the language. I'd never dream of another country changing to accommodate my dumb ass if I moved and failed to learn the local tongue.

It's hard to learn a language when every local finds it entertaining to speak yours. Native english speakers are probably the least integrated group of immigrants here

[MKJ]

i personally know more yanks that can understand dutch than maroccans that understand dutch0

[Ryoki]

...how many marrocans do you know?

EDIT: i've lived with an irishman for 1.5 years and got to know the Amsterdam expat community quite well. Trust me, 95% doesn't speak any dutch at all and has no intention whatsoever of learning it at some point. Don't get me wrong though, i blame us dutchies for it - we get all horny when we get a chance to speak english with an honest to god english person

[MKJ]

about a kabillion :s

[Ryoki]

Oh, i only know one, my neighbour. He speaks excellent dutch though.

Not so many marrocans live where i live btw, mostly surinam and antillian people. And people from Ghana who put little notes in my mailbox that go 'witchdoctor cures all diseases - only 100 euros per session - also good luck in business and love. Let the spirits guide you.'

[MKJ]

actually, the only marrocans you could possibly 'know' are the ones that speak your language, innit

[Ryoki]

Yeah... depends on your definition of 'know' i guess

[4days]

ignore the (non)problem of immigrants. americans don't really want the hispanic population to learn english... if they did we'd have to stop treating them like slave labor.

american schools should start with bilingual education in elementary school for one reason: GLOBALIZATION. let the plebians stop taking FL classes once they're old enough to have resigned themselves to a life of wage labor. we'll be generous and let them pretend like they're middle class though- it makes them easier to manipulate if they think they have something to lose.

aye, that's what we do over here. token effort to get kids learning a second language as standard, then give them the chance to drop it as a subject (usually in favour of something utterly useless) at the earliest opportunity.

i had to learn russian for a bit at school. had french, dutch, spanish and german mates as a kid but those classes were full, so i got russian. when the fuck am i ever going to need to speak russian? if i wanted to buy massive amounts of drugs or traffic prostitutes, i'd learn serbian.

[Nightshade]

ignore the (non)problem of immigrants. americans don't really want the hispanic population to learn english... if they did we'd have to stop treating them like slave labor.

american schools should start with bilingual education in elementary school for one reason: GLOBALIZATION. let the plebians stop taking FL classes once they're old enough to have resigned themselves to a life of wage labor. we'll be generous and let them pretend like they're middle class though- it makes them easier to manipulate if they think they have something to lose.

I have to strongly disagree with your first statement here. Have you ever lived in Florida or Texas? There are lots of areas in those states where you can't get a job if you don't speak Spanish. Also, I can tell you for an absolute FACT that immigration without assimilation is most definitely a problem. The school systems down here have to spend shitloads of taxpayer dollars on bilingual teachers to accommodate immigrant children whose parents haven't bothered to learn English. It's not the kids' fault, of course, but is it fair that my money goes to rectify this problem?
If you think for a minute that illegal immigration in this country isn't an important issue, I have to question your cognitive abilities. Yes, I blame the companies that hire illegal immigrants, they need to be forced to pay their workers a living wage. But, I also blame the US government for not controlling the borders, and the Mexican government for encouraging people to illegally cross the border. Hell, there are places in Mexico where the local governments print brochures telling people how to get across and how to apply for public assistance the second they get there. Why? Because once in the US, they send shitloads of money back to Mexico.

[menkent]

rofl. i grew up in florida and live in texas now, i know how hispanic people are ghettoized. i also, for the record, teach a foreign language for a living. your point about hispanics is irrelevant, since in the cases of florida and texas spanish can't really be considered a foreign language. like it or not, that's the language of a large portion of the indigenous population. in texas especially that's falling prey to a strange myth that the state was ever white/anglo in the first place.

also, please re-read my post. i didn't say immigration wasn't a problem. i instructed people, for the sake of my post about the broader issue of pros and cons of bilingual education, to ignore immigration to focus on the bigger picture. i should have guessed that some pedant, in this case you, would get all nationalistic and start whining about the evil brown people poking holes in your wallet.

[Guest]

Well not talking about the illegal immigrants if you accept immigrants into your country that don't neccessarily speak english that well and another language is their native language and communities gather that speak those languages it's the goverments job to say hey, these people are still equals even though they don't speak the main language and deserve the right to be able to speak this language just like anyone else, it's the freedom of expression. If there's a significant ammount of people in an area that speak a language it's fair to them to provide them service in that language if neccessary just as it wouldn't be fair to those children who were born in the US that speak spanish for example because of their parents which may or may not have been immigrants at the time. They have rights too.

They should have the ability to learn english. If you move to a new country, you should adapt to their culture.

I'm definitely not saying they shouldn't, but if they form communities and still speak in their native language and then their children which are born on US soil also speak their language as their native tongue and an acceptable ammount go to a school then that language should be in the curiculum.

[Grudge]

Yeah... depends on your definition of 'know' i guess

Do you "know" them in the Biblical sense?

[Nightshade]

rofl. i grew up in florida and live in texas now, i know how hispanic people are ghettoized. i also, for the record, teach a foreign language for a living. your point about hispanics is irrelevant, since in the cases of florida and texas spanish can't really be considered a foreign language. like it or not, that's the language of a large portion of the indigenous population. in texas especially that's falling prey to a strange myth that the state was ever white/anglo in the first place.

also, please re-read my post. i didn't say immigration wasn't a problem. i instructed people, for the sake of my post about the broader issue of pros and cons of bilingual education, to ignore immigration to focus on the bigger picture. i should have guessed that some pedant, in this case you, would get all nationalistic and start whining about the evil brown people poking holes in your wallet.

Wow, I was with you right up until you had to start acting like a dickhead. I shouldn't expect much more than retarded assumptions from an idiot liberal hippie, I suppose.
And now you're REALLY making it clear that you're an idiot, as you obviously can't understand the plain English I used to write that post.

[menkent]

idiot liberal hippie

psh, homo.

i read your post. you said people should learn spanish because there are tons of hispanic people and that immigration (illegal) is a huge problem because it costs us money. on those points we agree. i'm merely saying that people don't *want* to learn spanish. it would ruin our entire system of identity politics since we'd be relating ourselves to The Other on the far (or near =\) side of the Rio Grande. that's just not how the system works. in the capitalist society (ours, thank jeebus) everyone wants to learn the language that has the money. so the mexicans are learning english (apparently not fast enough for some people) and we should be learning european and asian languages. now what the hell's the problem?

[Nightshade]

The problem is that last part of your post, wherein you accuse me of being nationalistic and whining about brown people. Then you contradict yourself in your reply.

I think you're selling the average American short. I don't think that most people want to keep seeing immigrants as objects, I think that they get irritated at the refusal to assimilate. And as far as the rate at which immigrants, illegal or otherwise, learn English, well, I don't see a lot of effort being made to learn English at all. You should know this, espceially if you've lived in Florida. The truly indigenous population in Florida is freakin' Seminoles, not Cubans and Puerto Ricans. It's been the huge influx of immigrants that's given rise to the widespread use of Spanish.
I'm only being nationalistic in the sense that I want all Americans to speak English. I don't hate immigrants, and I don't want legal immigration eliminated. Just don't try to make America into Mexico or Cuba. Bring your music, your literature, your cuisine, your clothing, your history. But if you don't want to bring it in a manner in which all Americans can enjoy it, go back home.

[menkent]

meh, these things take time. at one point there were large sections of the population that only spoke italian, german, polish, etc. given access to education it will all sort itself out over a couple generations. the key is just letting them garden, farm, and house-clean their way to the point where they can get on the big kids' socio-economic rollercoaster. the overly-liberal solution is to launch some sort of paternalist intervention and either try to buy their way into mainstream society for them through subsidies and quotas, which won't work, or teach everyone else spanish and try to form a pidgin culture, which also won't work. equally silly is the super-conservative solution of deporting them all or shutting the borders- again a total mess.

[Nightshade]

Somewhere in between is a viable solution, which I believe entails enforcing border controls, smacking around corporate assholes that hire illegals, and welfare reform that oh, I don't know, REQUIRES PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP?