Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005 Status: offline
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What Emperor said, I am not completely sure how to respond to it. But I'm going to try, and since Lam has not thrown the Racist label into the ring here, I think maybe this is unfounded. One can take many statements more than one way. One day my boss asked me for something I did not have, he says "What good are you ?". I replied "Absolutley none, that's why I work here". Of course we were joking, but some people would really take that hard. Now the last element of the original post seemed to ask the first question in Spanish. From this could imply one of two things, or both. Maybe LaM is right and certain forms of expression should be avoided in public forums, but I think he takes it too far, and Emperor may have gone too deep into political correctness as well. The author of that piece had a certain intention. What it was we cannot be sure, ever. There are two possibilities as I see it. One is that the author is a racist and implies that Hispanic kids are given an unfair advantage to make the numbers look good. Two is that the author is not a racist and is protesting the unfair disadvantage to level out the scores. This is part of the 'no child left behind' bullshit. In my school you would remain in the fourth grade until you reach the entry level academic achievement required to get into the fifth grade. Age does not matter. Perhaps in younger years there is a reason to just pass them on, but you are creating more problems down the road. Remember that word 'achievement'. Number two actually assumes that children of immigrants would normally score lower if not for some advantage. I have no figures on this, so we are talking imperical logic here. Let's say that it is true that kids of immigrants score lower. Now is stating the truth about a certain race racist ? We all know what a stereotype is, and conciously avoid it, but soimetimes me thinkst thou dost protest too much. Realistically, OK, we are talking the US, so the OP was probably referrieng to Mexicans. Let's bring this into the mix. They come here to live in barrios and ghettos, what do you think they left ? This is their better life and actually I think they are getting let down. Figuratively they came out of the fire and jumped into our frying pan. Their dreams are only slightly realized, because it is not worse here. The OP also has a point that English is indeed the official language here. Proficiency in that must be of prime importance. Oops, I meant the author. Anyway, to give certain questions in Spanish in the US might be ok, but not in math. Our family emmigrated here four generations ago, approximately. The very first thing they did was to learn the language. We kept our heritage, but assimilated into the country. We did not want to change it to our specific needs, collect a check or have ballots printed in Polish. HA, think of this, in response to printing ballots in Spanish, democrats in Michigan IIRC wanted to have them printed in Arabic as well. Let's back the truck up a bit here. I thought people wanted to come to the US for what it is, not to try to make it a satellite state of their country of origin. Ther country of origin was the fucking problem that caused them to come here. Where is the logic in turning the whole country into a new Babylon ? If you want to understand Boyle's law or Ohm's law you need to be able to express yourself in English and recieve instruction in English. If you can't you are no good to industry anyway. That's the way it is. What I can't see is that any child would be in a normal US school and not know English. This puzzles me. This is not supposed to happen. I hope the person who mentioned 'English as a second language' was not bitching. Any kids living here need to learn it to be functional members of society. And last but not least, those who emmigrate to the US, or any other country for that matter, should start the process before they even leave. Learn the language and currency. Rules of the road whether they get driver's licenses or not, things like that. To echo the idea put forth before, that is the Parents' responsibility. Notice the apostrophe AFTER the 's', that means BOTH. People think they can just have five kids, then fight all the time and then get divorced. NO ! This is what breeds these unteachable hellions, but not all the time. Glaring examples of genius can come from the most hellish of homes, but that doesn't make it right to impede the child like that. Thing is, buy your kids encyclopedias, and make sure they know how to read them. We had one coming a volume a month, and I read them cover to cover. Do you think this is happening in the ghetto ? Do you think this is happening in places people moved out of to move up to the ghetto ? The human brain is like a machine, just like an arm or a leg. Without the correct input it does not function correctly. Not only in adulthood, when one only needs to sustain, more importantly when one is growing. This is more like leaving out certain parts when building something. Parents are building something. And they only get one chance. That's my angle on it. I do wish I had learned at least one Latino type language when I was in school. Unilingual people are at a terrible disadvantage nowadays. I do not in any way say that kids in school shouldn't learn three or four languages, they should. I wish I did. The fact that others can communicate with each other right in front of you, but not with you because you can't understand is a very unacceptable situation. Facts of life: Spanish speakers must know English to do any significant business in the US. English speakers must become multilingual. Was the OP a racist ? I don't care. You are allowed to be racist, just don't hurt anyone, and that means the kids too. If you are a racist, you do not expose that to kids, just as you would not expose kink. This is long enough, I'll be back. T
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