![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 31st, 2012 12:38 amLet's talk about "English only" education for a minute.
1. When I was getting my ESL certification, we had 57 languages in my district and at least 150 in my state in the schools. ESL classes have to be immersion, not only because it's effective, but because speaking Spanish isn't going to help the Ukrainians, the Sikhs, the kid from the Guatemalan highlands who only speaks one of the Mayan dialects, or the Vietnamese kid. This idea that ESL support is holding kids back is bullshit, and if you spend any time in a beginning ESL class, you see a lot of acting out or demonstrating or pictures to get across the idea of the words and concepts.
2. Schools are immersion environments just naturally. Kids are surrounded by English all day at school. They see English language TVs and movies. They hear English on the street. They use English for basic transactions all the time. Even the kids that emphatically do not want to be hear are highly motivated to learn, both survival and for social reasons. May I add, duh.
3. If you make English only the law, it means the teacher can't be flexible when the kids get lost academically. Remember, they aren't just taking a couple years off from other school work to just learn English. They need to keep up in other subjects too. When you say English only, it means that the first grader doesn't get reading instruction ze desperately needs to keep up until ze is proficient. It means that middle schooler can't have a direction or rule too complicated for mime translated even in an emergency. It means that a child might end up two or three years behind in science, math, or social studies because ze can't get extra tutoring in zir native language if the class is too hard to follow vocabulary wise.
4. Yes, they did experiment decades ago with doing a year or so of content courses in native languages, but that got abandoned just about everywhere because the model of inclusion classes with extra ESL support and the occasional translation when absolutely necessary does work better. Being inflexible and absolutist takes away a lot of the support they need to keep up, and learning English is hard enough already. Why make it harder by making it illegal to tailor support to the needs of the child? For example, Ukrainian kids above a certain age generally arrive literate in at least two languages and can use a English/Ukrainian dictionary if they can't figure out a word, but what happens to the refugee kid who speaks for languages, but is barely literate in only one because they were never anywhere long enough with a functioning school system for the child to attend? The gifted kid with a facility for languages will learn okay whatever we do, but what happens to the profoundly mentally challenged kid with the behavioral issues over in the life skills room? Not every child has the exact same needs. Not every child learns the same way. Mechanizing the process just grinds the one who don't fit in the gears.
5. It also means we can't send translated letters home to the parents when there's a problem. Relying on the child that just got into a fist fight to translate the letter truthfully for the parents is... naive? Asinine? It basically flies in the face everything every functioning adult knows about humans and every teacher knows about students. It means we can't send translated letters about academic issues or after school opportunities that might help their child. It means we can't send translated health alert when there's a parasite or microbial epidemic, or if there is an in service or other day off that requires hard working parents to make special child care arrangements. If you can't see why trying to make folks that are learning their English more slowly as they are working and their language centers have migrated, what with them being adults, puzzle out complicated missives from the school is a bad idea, well I give up on you.
6. This is really about racism. Gingrich really gives that away when he not only assumes that all the immigrant kids speak Spanish, not Russian, Ukrainian, tamal, kurdish, etc.. He gives it away when he calls Spanish "the language of the ghetto." He wears his racism on his sleeve most days, and that makes it easy to spot, but that's what's going on behind every push for English only. It's not about what's best for the children or helping them learn faster, but about punishing children who are often already deeply traumatized not just from leaving everything and everyone they cared about behind, but are often from conflict zones or other seriously fucked up situations in their home countries.
1. When I was getting my ESL certification, we had 57 languages in my district and at least 150 in my state in the schools. ESL classes have to be immersion, not only because it's effective, but because speaking Spanish isn't going to help the Ukrainians, the Sikhs, the kid from the Guatemalan highlands who only speaks one of the Mayan dialects, or the Vietnamese kid. This idea that ESL support is holding kids back is bullshit, and if you spend any time in a beginning ESL class, you see a lot of acting out or demonstrating or pictures to get across the idea of the words and concepts.
2. Schools are immersion environments just naturally. Kids are surrounded by English all day at school. They see English language TVs and movies. They hear English on the street. They use English for basic transactions all the time. Even the kids that emphatically do not want to be hear are highly motivated to learn, both survival and for social reasons. May I add, duh.
3. If you make English only the law, it means the teacher can't be flexible when the kids get lost academically. Remember, they aren't just taking a couple years off from other school work to just learn English. They need to keep up in other subjects too. When you say English only, it means that the first grader doesn't get reading instruction ze desperately needs to keep up until ze is proficient. It means that middle schooler can't have a direction or rule too complicated for mime translated even in an emergency. It means that a child might end up two or three years behind in science, math, or social studies because ze can't get extra tutoring in zir native language if the class is too hard to follow vocabulary wise.
4. Yes, they did experiment decades ago with doing a year or so of content courses in native languages, but that got abandoned just about everywhere because the model of inclusion classes with extra ESL support and the occasional translation when absolutely necessary does work better. Being inflexible and absolutist takes away a lot of the support they need to keep up, and learning English is hard enough already. Why make it harder by making it illegal to tailor support to the needs of the child? For example, Ukrainian kids above a certain age generally arrive literate in at least two languages and can use a English/Ukrainian dictionary if they can't figure out a word, but what happens to the refugee kid who speaks for languages, but is barely literate in only one because they were never anywhere long enough with a functioning school system for the child to attend? The gifted kid with a facility for languages will learn okay whatever we do, but what happens to the profoundly mentally challenged kid with the behavioral issues over in the life skills room? Not every child has the exact same needs. Not every child learns the same way. Mechanizing the process just grinds the one who don't fit in the gears.
5. It also means we can't send translated letters home to the parents when there's a problem. Relying on the child that just got into a fist fight to translate the letter truthfully for the parents is... naive? Asinine? It basically flies in the face everything every functioning adult knows about humans and every teacher knows about students. It means we can't send translated letters about academic issues or after school opportunities that might help their child. It means we can't send translated health alert when there's a parasite or microbial epidemic, or if there is an in service or other day off that requires hard working parents to make special child care arrangements. If you can't see why trying to make folks that are learning their English more slowly as they are working and their language centers have migrated, what with them being adults, puzzle out complicated missives from the school is a bad idea, well I give up on you.
6. This is really about racism. Gingrich really gives that away when he not only assumes that all the immigrant kids speak Spanish, not Russian, Ukrainian, tamal, kurdish, etc.. He gives it away when he calls Spanish "the language of the ghetto." He wears his racism on his sleeve most days, and that makes it easy to spot, but that's what's going on behind every push for English only. It's not about what's best for the children or helping them learn faster, but about punishing children who are often already deeply traumatized not just from leaving everything and everyone they cared about behind, but are often from conflict zones or other seriously fucked up situations in their home countries.
