brewing, stirring, waiting

So, I have been working on, at least in my mind, on a long, long piece titled "Se Solicita Esclavos" which means, for those of you are not in the Spanish know, Slaves Wanted.

It's a harsh title. Purposefully.

Perhaps that is why it has been so hard to put pen to paper.

I will rant a little here anyway.

So, we are educating more non-English speakers than ever in our history?
---Just where are the facts to back up this claim??
---Has anyone who says and writes these claims ever studied the history of public education in the United States. For your information, compulsory and free public education resulted from a desire to Americanize immigrants who were from non-English speaking countries (read German, mostly).
--Oh, and by the way, when we count the number of non-English speakers, what we call English Language Learners (ELs or ELLs), has anyone stopped to check that we are counting accurately? I mean, it's fishy to me when I see lists of ELs whose primary language is listed as ENGLISH! If their primary language is English, just how are they ELs?? How many of those listed as ELs also have their primary language listed as English?

I could go on, but, hopefully, you get the picture.

The article to which this entry links gives the basics from the Pew Hispanic Center's latest round of polls around bilingualism, English acquisition in immigrants and their children who are from Spanish-speaking countries. It shines a little bit of light on the potentially inaccurate numbers of non-English speaking students being educated...

Why does it matter?

Well, in just about every newspaper article and so-called research paper, education reformers and anti-immigrant groups alike are blaming low test scores on non-English speaking students.

If you spend all your time blaming the students for why public education doesn't work, it will be very difficult to look for solutions beyond we don't have a moral responsibility to educate them, lock the doors or throw them out (even if they are citizens). Perhaps that is overstating the situation; on the other hand, perhaps it is not stating the issue forcefully enough.

Oh, and one last little piece of info, quite a few years ago, back in 1999 or 2000, the United States ranked as the fourth largest Spanish speaking country in the world. That was without Kansas and its xenophobic English only law.

Only in racist America would being bilingual be a negative thing.