The Crit triggly puffing in the Florida law thread got me to thinking.
Is it time to consider requiring US public primary educators to be bilingual Spanish/English?
If one looks at Brandon’s results and the projections for the border, perhaps it is.
Or least a language pay for those who are. Current teachers could take Spanish (or English) classes during summer vacation. Give them a training pay (mimimun federal wage) and a bump for milestones.
Special Forces had a pretty good system. Proficiency test and all that.
Maybe a directed recruiting drive to get more capable teachers from the fastest growing demographic. Some college debt forgiveness for Latinas agreeing to teach for oh say 5 years?
And accept teaching credentials from LA countries. Let them test out in a day maybe, if we really are arrogant enough to still believe we produce better teachers than they do.
Over 90% of teachers in the US are non Hispanic, and I would assume nearly 100% of them don’t speak Spanish. So staffing would be impossible. Furthermore, segregating students based on language would be another logistical nightmare.
I think it would be better (in most districts) to have the students in question spend a half year or a year studying almost nothing but English as a second language.
It’s not very hard.
It doesn’t take very long
They are going to need it anyway.
I think it would take longer than a year for most of them. In most cases outside of their school life, their families and friends largely speak nothing but Spanish.
No.
But I learned both German and mandarin Chinese via immersing myself in country. (Chinese was hard.)
====c
Additional trivia, my wife and I established a Chinese as a second language afterschool program for K-1 kids. Most of the kids were born in the US to chinese parents. Parents spoke only chinese at home yet, immersed in the US and having ZERO teachers who ahem “helped them” by speaking chinese, the kids were enlgihs fluent and could not spoeak to their own grandparents.
Our program was so success the leaders from the local Pashtun-speaking and creole-speaking communitites asked us for pointers.
AGAIN, zero K-12 teachers “helped them” by speaking to the in their native language. The kids spoke English and had to be taught their parents language because they could not speak to their own grandparents.
Amazingly god things happen when you take away bilingual teachers, bilingual television, bilingual everything.
Consider the following case, (I am not arguing for “hsitorical justice or whatever,” just pointing out a rela life example)
English as a second language was not taught at Ellis island. Immigrants came here speaking nothing but Polish or Italian or Russian etc… They lived in their own little Italys, Chinatowns, etc. where most Not-english was spoken
Their teachers made ZERO attempt to speak Russian and Polish and Chinese and Italian etc… The kids may have spent an extra year or two in school but they did alright. Most who were born here did not repeat any years of school.
The lesson:
In many cases, including among people who grew up in Little Italy and China town, and little-Pakistan, accomodating their language “needs” only hurts them.
The future of public education is dumped down ■■■■ for the masses because tax dollars for those schools will be transferred to the private sector…done in part with the unwitting assistance who are fighting over made up wedge issues.
