There is nothing wrong with speaking other languages at home, or even in parts of the community. However, English is the language of business, schools, government, and any other public institution. In what other country does the majority language group placate to the minority?

ah, but don’t you see. Poor little Eidelweiss has been giving you the clue of the problem, although unless you grew up in the more “democratic” -and what I mean by that is democracy as opposed to our much wiser democratic republic- you don’t really know, although I admit it is creeping more and more into our culture.

There is a belief, a very wrong and dangerous one, that government and courts are all to protect the wants of the minority. Not the freedom of all, but the loud, obnoxious minority.

It is this premise that was taught to me in Canada, so I can only imagine the indoctrination a poor benighted little edelweiss. You have to forgive them, because they literally do not know what they do, even though they think they are the “smartest” around.

They are not, not when it comes to true freedom and responsibility.

Side note: My great-grandparents on my father’s side came from Sweden. We found some letters written by my great-grandmother not long ago, written after she has been in the America’s perhaps some 20-30 years.

It was in perfect, beautiful English. She came as an adult, lived the life of a poorer farm owner, but still managed to learn not only to speak English but to write in it.

I am so proud of her. She has far more character than what I see these days, with illegal immigrants thinking they have a write to change our country into another barrio for their particular existance.

But there were times when my 1st year ESL students (who knew no English) couldn’t understand something I said in English. I would then have one of my Hispanic students explain in Spanish and English and it really helped the kids learn. By the end of the year, everyone’s English was better.

Now, I was in a public school. And this was my experience. However, given that this is a private school – I don’t know how it is that the parents would sue and take it into the courts. If they don’t like the policy, they can take their kids out and transfer them to a public school or another private school.

English-only is here to stay: A federal judge ruled Friday that a Wichita Catholic school policy requiring students to speak only English didn’t break any civil rights laws. [...] The Rev. Thomas Leland, St. Anne’s pastor, said that English was the c…

On August 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am, DBNinKY said:

On August 16th, 2008 at 11:04 am, lgm said:

School officials testified that English-speaking students at St. Anne’s middle school were intimidated by hearing their peers speak in a language they didn’t understand.

The politics of fear.

LGM, if those kids don’t learn English now, while they have the necessary supports available to them to make its acquisition complete and fluent, they will be sentenced to a life of hardship and poverty.

But this is the kind of thing that keeps them on the Democrat plantation: if they are dumbed down and dependent on government for everything, they naturally become Democrats.

On August 16th, 2008 at 10:45 pm, lgm said:

Now look how the context justifies my “politics of fear” statement. Someone is afraid that kids who only speak English would feel bad if they heard kids who are so smart that they can speak more than one language.

You are so close, yet so far away from the problem, which is not kids that are “so smart that they can speak more than one language,” but rather, a group of immigrants that can’t seem to learn English. If they were as smart as you insinuate, there would be no need for bilingual “education.” Let these students show us how smart they are by speaking fluent English.

To avoid that, they want to ban Spanish. And not only in the classroom (where it would make sense if instruction is in English), but everywhere else in school.

I was always taught that speaking in a language that others around you obviously do not understand was just plain rude.

lgm said:
Now look how the context justifies my “politics of fear” statement. Someone is afraid that kids who only speak English would feel bad if they heard kids who are so smart that they can speak more than one language.

The problem here, Gertrude, is that these “smart” people yopu are using as an example are not fluent in both languages. They converse with each other in their native tongue and butcher the english language in class. Being an elite “educator” even you must admit that non-english speaking students make your job harder. Although there is the possibility that the liberal Kool-Aid has clouded your judgment.

I don’t believe in kow-towing to those who have had their feelings hurt but the solution to this problem is speak English and nobody gets hurt.