Fight over English onstruction in school
 

I'm not sure what to make of this LA Times article but it has to do with all those English learners in the LAUSD school district and and how they learn English. There may be a personal slant to the article by the reporter, but it doesn't seem to be pushing any one course.

I think this discussion is valid because, like it or not, a significant number of those kids are American citizens by virtue of the 14th amendment, and there are serious ramifications if those kids aren't educated, brought into the mainstream of America without becoming a further drain on the tax base and drag on economic productivity.

Is the conclusion to be reached is that:

There should be

English immersion classes

Dual immersion classes

Mixed classes of various English proficiencies

Segregation according to English proficiency

Does any of it help in the long run towards mass English proficiency

Does any of it serve to retain use of a foreign language at the expense of English proficiency


A partial quote from commenter skepticalsurfer at 7:41 AM October 20, 2013

A quote from ashamed2011 at 7:44 AM October 20, 2013

Whole article http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-a...,1836196.story

This is a result of pandering to all Spanish speakers. All those that think they're so cool, tolerant or accepting when they choose to speak Spanish to others in public to show their progressive attitude are at blame for this. In other words, how do they expect those who speak Spanish to learn English if they don't hear it or have to even try to speak it. This starts in the public realm because if it weren't acceptable to speak Spanish in public both the parents and children would make the effort to learn English.

Learning a language doesn't take any great skill, even those with a below average IQ learn to speak a language. It just takes hearing it often and the desire to speak it.

I don't know... I've seen so many different things...

There are quite a few who do as little as they can and still get by, sometimes those who do know pretend not to speak English - and both those types can be passive aggressive smart asses when it comes to mixing. But, I was around a crew today with half from Mexico and the other half born in the US, and even though all speak Spanish a significant chunk of the communications between themselves (even the Mexican nationals) was in English. I don't know if it was because I was there, or if they do this among themselves with no one else present.

Elena was a teacher's aide in an Orange county school when her kids were little. The school had the ESL for the Spanish speakers but not for the Vietnamese kids. She told me the Vietnamese kids learned Spanish on the playground and then English from the Spanish speaker's ESL program, and most even went on to surpass the Spanish speakers in English proficiency. Furthermore, they all watch the same English language kiddie programs on TV.

On the other hand, even though I met a young woman in National City (south of San Diego) who was brought here as a relatively young child and whom I believe graduated High School (and still spoke broken English), most of the youngsters seem to learn enough English to carry on in a somewhat normal manner.

It seems that there may be a divide between those who may speak the language well enough, but have trouble comprehending what they read and have difficulty writing in an educated manner and those who go on to master the language.

I believe a lot of the problem has to do with parents and relatives who, through a cultural inferiority complex hiding behind "traditions" (as well as "I had a third grade education in Mexico and I do good enough with my minimum wage American job") don't encourage the kids like the Asian parents do (with a few beatings if necessary to get the idea across to the Asian kids).

Of course, there are some who are quite bright and do well against what I would see as hopeless odds with their home environment, and there actually are some parents from Mexico who do push their kids. The man's a racist asshole in my book, but my Congressman Raul Ruiz became a doctor after growing up poor in an immigrant Coachella Valley migrant farm worker home. I don't know if it's true, but I heard his mother was all over his ass to become something (The racist asshole thing was probably learned in college).

There's an uneducated wannabe Mexican scam artist I know (tries every trick in the book to make an easy buck) whose two sons became LEO's (he's disowned them both, and one is an immigration agent) and his daughter became a neural surgeon - if anyone had an excuse not to make it it was those kids.

But what actually works to educate the majority of those kids? The drop out rate is abysmal, and it seems to me that a lot of the educational focus is to create some sort of an old school Chicano movement fantasy in these kids heads in lieu of of actually educating them - and the redirecting race baiting drum is beaten hard for all the failure.

Why should we care?

As I said, like it or not a significant portion of them are US citizens by virtue of the 14th amendment, and it won't do any of us any future good if they become more of a burden to society than many already have.