English mandatory in schools

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several sites state that 27 states have english only laws but 1 can find listings of 25 alabama, arizona, arkansas, california, colorado, florida, georgia, illionis, indiana, kentucky, massachusetts, mississippi, montana, nebraska, newhampshire, northcarolina, northdakota, oklahoma, southcarolina, southdakota, tennesee, utah, virginia, west virginia & wyoming.
I'm not trying to defend the actions taken HOWEVER this is an alternative school we are talking about. they only have 173 students and 4 teachers. This is a school where students go when they can't get the teaching they need in the standard public school system.
Still not sure about all the states listed just can't see ultra-freakin-liberal california doing this.
@t2bruno i agree 100%
I don't have a problem what language aperson speaks on their on time but at work or (especially) when dealing with law enforcement personnal use ENGLISH ! !. By the way, most latinos speak and understand english much better than most let on, they will try to get out of a ticket in a heartbeat by acting like they don't know what you are saying to them(hoping you'll get frustrated and just give them a warning). Personal experience ,had it happen all the time (at least 4 out of every 5 latinos) still not as often as women crying! you just would not believe how many think this is going to work.

 

Id've refused, and then take it to the highest court if necessary. That's just bull****. There's either something we're not being told about this story, or that's just downright discrimination.

 

@martaug: Even if those laws say English is the official language, it still doesn't follow that students shouldn't speak Spanish or any other language in their free time, outside the classroom, not replying to a teacher who asked in English etc, does it? In my view, perhaps the teachers felt insecure, hearing children talk in a language they didn't understand.

Heh, schools often come up with various crap and then surrender before parents. Sometimes it looks like everything is going to click in their scheme until children start talking to parents. Then caboom... all the absurdity and illegality of school rules and punishment policy sees daylight.

The problem with schools and teachers is that they are supposed (or usurping the right, if you prefer) to punish young pupils for infractions and adjudicate between them. As a result, schools and teachers act a bit like something between law enforcement and the judiciary. The problem is, they are often as far from having a vague idea of due process of the law as possible without being clinically retarded.

From my experience, which has been behind me for long years, I can tell you they don't like all the bother of finding out who's right or what really happened. They will take the word of the parents of the other child or the teacher's favourite students in a class. Or make a majority vote between kids. All sorts of such absurd crap. Forget about being innocent until proven otherwise. They should neither be expected to do it, nor have the authority. Especially if it concerns things that happen outside the school's premises. Take it to a family court if the school is already acting like one. Preventing kids from leaving when something has been stolen or preventing violence or suspending students caught cheating is one thing, but playing the judge (or the prosecutor or even inquisitor, for that matter) is not something schools should do. In fact, I believe they shouldn't even be able to rule that a kid cheated if they didn't catch him red-handed or find the same piece of text in someone else's work (so long as it isn't memorised from the coursebook or a popular encyclopaedia, for instance). Teachers have other things to do and different skills.

[ December 17, 2005, 13:55: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

People are a big problem.

In holland we have a system that monitors very bad persons to return to society(In te US you have the death penalty). The persons monitoring them are focused on one thing only and that is to bring them back into society whatever the costs.(This is an other debate) They seem blind to any events that may happen. almost weekly one is missing for a period of time and for them it is just one of those things. Not for their victims. My point is that those people really believe in their system.

scientists make good but sometimes awfull things. They say: in the name of science and make things like biological weapons. for average joe on the street it is unthinkable to do so. That group of people is focused on that aspect of their lives.

How does this compare with the topic?

Well teachers have the same drive like the above mentioned groups. As if teaching is the sole purpose of live. So in their tunnel view they make laws on school level to do the right thing in a comon view.

But then incidents happen like with the boy in the topic. They cannot adjust with sinle cases and act the only way they can think of.

Do not get me wrong, I like science, teachers are underrated and the shrinks do good work but you all get the point don't you?(Please do not be insulted if you belong to the above groups. It is a harsh statement but an explanatory one. we all belong to the herd)

I, and that is an other point of view, think that every child must learn english from 6 years old next to a native tongue or other second speech. I did not and can say to all english nations it is a handicap. (My english is above average.)

 

i noticed this:

its not even in the schools rules that he cannot speak spanish, and in so the teachers themselves should be held responsible for the discrimination.

and this:

is plain crap, does this guy have a brain? if he really is planning to blow up the school, i doubt a little SPEAK ENGLISH rule is going to deter him from saying such in spanish, knowing that the teachers cannot understand him.

 

Well, almost the same happens in Catalonia; in Basque Country almost happened the same: kids would be forced to speak Basque in school breaks but the law, after a great debate, never were aproved; in Catalonia, every shop HAS to have 90% of its adds in Catalonian and if you don't have it, you get fined for about 500€; every school must teach in Catalonian; the main debate here is that almost 80% of the Catalonian population don't want to be forced to speak/write/read everything in Catalonian; because the few 'nacionalists' people who are fighting to make Catalonia independent, people from Madrid and othere major cities, tend to think that all Catalonians are the same; the store where I work opened a new branch in Madrid, so our boss forbid employees to speak Catalonian while working there because Madrilist (sp?) who hear them would not buy anything and would say to everybody they know to not buy there because the store is Catalonian. Catalonian government is very strict in its language policy; even they go around saying that anybody can speak whatever language they want, you are almost a criminal if you don't know Catalonian.
For me to get a job, had to learn the language, if you don't know it, you don't get it.
There were cases in the government administration of people who couldn't get a job because they didn't speak Catalonian 'perfectly'.
There are people who lost their job because in the competitive exam, they scored 6,98 in Catalonian instead the 7 needed.
Compared to that kid, things here are very much worst.

 

And what do you all think of language policies such as those of Catalonia? I can certainly condone their will to keep their own identity, but this is a complicate matter.

 

The school was identified as an Alternative school, but it is never made clear what sort of alternative is being offered by the school. If the school is set up primarily to teach English to immigrants, then an English Only policy makes sense. It seems that such a policy is not in place, however, so this is a stunning example of stupidity -- AS IT IS TOLD! There could be other factors involved here that are not reported in the article . . .

 

Hang on, all this talk about official languages and such....

Didn't Spain find America first?
Its only because us Brits are so great that Spanish isn't the official language

 

South America, and it was actually the Portuguese. For the record, except for Brazil, all South American countries have Spanish as mother language.

 

@Svyatoslav: that's not quite correct, because Paraguay has Guarani as official language, and all the country uses it very proudly; in Bolivia, Spanish is an official language among 2 others, but almost everyone speaks Aimara and Quechua; in Guyana / French Guyana almost nobody speaks Spanish; in Ecuador, Spanish and 3 natives are the official languages and almost everybody speaks Quechua. If Bolivians, Ecuatorians and Paraguayans learn Spanish is becuase they work/live in a Spanish speaking environment, mostly Argentina or Spain.

 

Well technically, if we really want to say who got there first, we should all be speaking Norwegian, or Sweedish, as the Vikings were the first Europeans on the North American continent.

 

Supposing no stray Greeks or Romans made it.

Egyptians or Carthaginians might have, not like they were Europeans.

And Catalonians overdo it.

 

Sydax,

French and English Guianas are not central america? Anyway, I was aware some countries had amerindian national languages, but I was under the impression that in all those countries Spanish was in the least as much spoken as them.

 

English may not be the official language in the United States, but it is certainly the most common. Most laws and publications are in English, IIRC, and the standard language of commerce and business is English.

This is still no reason to suspend a kid for speaking Spanish, though.

 

Well, if you go back far enough, there really weren't natives. All the evidence points to immigration during the last Ice Age over the Bering Strait, which at that time, was possible to walk across. But yeah, by the time anyone else got there there were dozens of sub-groups of Native Americans in hundreds of different tribes.