emc/h1-b

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 14:12:41 UTC
John Chambers <jc at trillian.mit.edu> wrote:

> There is a very long  history  in  the  US  of  suppressing
> immigrants'   native  languages.   Children  are  routinely
> punished for speaking anything other than English. Very few
> texts  are  available  to  children  in any language except
> English.   The  result  is  the  well-known  phenomenon  of
> children who can hardly speak to their grandparents.
I think we have gotten a bit off the original topic, but...
With bilingual education, it is required that non-english speakers be
taught in their native language. In esscence, a Xiang (eg one of China's
languages) speaking person arrives in Ma (before 2003), and the school
system must provide that person with a bilingual education. There was no
real effort to teach that person how to communicate properly in English.
The intent of English immersion is to teach that person English  so he
or she can learn the other subjects in English.

Neither program is perfect. The problem with the Bilingual program is
that it has developed an expensive infrastructure in the schools,
especially in the districts with a lot of non-English speaking people. 
The real issue is not language suppression, but culture. Historically,
the US has been a melting pot, with pockets of non-English speaking
cultural areas. Northern Maine, for instance used to have French
speaking communities, Central Pennsylvania has German speaking
populations. In the melting pot model, we have developed our own culture
with features from many different parts of the world. With the
"multi-cultural" model, the intent is to maintain the separate cultures
within our culture.
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9


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