Did I miss some crucial Supreme Court ruling, whereby we took free speech from the mouths of minors? A Kansas court judge has OK'd a Catholic school's decision to ban all non-English speech within its walls.
The way he sees it, telling kids they can't speak in any language but English does not create a hostile learning environment. Parents of three kids in the school district disagree - all Hispanic, they want their kids to have the right to speak Spanish within the walls of the building.
What's wrong with that?
Honestly, yes, I think people should make every attempt to speak English in our country - the same way that we should make every attempt in Franch to speak French or in Mexico to speak Spanish. When in Rome and all. . . BUT denying children the chance to speak in their native tongues with friends and siblings on the playground or in the lunchroom (we're not talking about in a classroom) is simply mean-spirited. And, wait for it . . . counter-productive to their education.
You heard me. American kids now take another language in school in an attempt to help our children compete with the multi-lingual residents of just about every other advanced nation on the planet. Parents pay for their kids to have extra language lessons, and they park them in front of the television with Dora or Diego turned to full blast. We are trying to make a bilingual nation, and here is a school smack dab in the middle trying to take away from the group that's already achieved that.
To have children sitting in the lunchroom speaking Spanish with their friends is an incredible resource for this school - it's essentially immersive language education for their classmates. The rest of the kids in the lunchroom are going to be trying to figure out WHAT those kids are saying - in other words, learning from them.
The children who grow up speaking two languages have a gift that will provide them advantages later on in life, when their unique skill sets are demanded in the workplace, when their ability to learn another language makes it easier to learn another . . . and another. It's a gift to be fostered by their teachers, not forced out of them.
If you're getting ready to respond with the standard, "This is America, we speak English here," please, stop. Think about it. As I said, it's preferred that people learn English for the day-to-day operations of American life, and in the classroom where all the kids and teachers are speaking English, that is appropriate (with acceptions exceptions, of course, for the kids who are just learning English).
Let's face it - kids do learn English. Adults are another story, but kids DO learn English - they can't help it, with their friends speaking English, their teachers speaking English, and often the need to translate for their parents. Allowing children to retain their cultural identity does not make them less American, and it won't make this nation - the so-called melting pot - any less American.
If anything, it will make a stronger nation, one better able to compete on a global scale where the language of trade is English and Mandarin and Spanish and . . .
Our forefathers called it freedom of speech because they were granting us the freedom to speak our minds, but in today's global economy, speech begets our kids freedom.
Image: St. Anne Catholic School (the school in question)
Related Posts:
