Afraid of Other Languages?
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Ruben Navarrette, Jr., is a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune; today I read one of his columns printed in the San Jose Mercury News. It’s an excellent column addressing the ridiculous “controversy” over two Vietnamese-American valedictorians in Louisiana who included snippets of Vietnamese in their speeches thanking their parents. Their speeches were almost entirely in English, mind you; they just included a single line or so each in Vietnamese. School officials hit the ceiling, apparently, and are considering banning anything other than English in future speeches. (If this school has a Latin motto, like many schools do, then this consideration becomes even more hilariously wrongheaded, on top of already being racist and xenophobic.) As far as I’m concerned, the two young women demonstrated their commendable virtues of intelligence, multilingualism, good judgment, and respect for their parents.
Anyway, Navarrette’s column does an excellent job of responding to the controversy. He quotes a Louisiana school official who said “I don’t like them addressing in [a] foreign language,” and responds eloquently and forcefully:
Here’s what I don’t like. I don’t like it when busybody officials think that because they don’t like something, they have to outlaw it. I don’t like that language has become a proxy for the immigration debate and the anxiety that some people feel over a changing cultural landscape.
I don’t like it that some American teenagers barely speak proper English, much less a foreign language, and that they will eventually be outmatched in the global job market if they come up against someone from Europe, Asia or Latin America who speaks two or three languages. I don’t like it that some of these same American kids resent the very notion of competition, and that English-only policies enable them by making everyone the same so that no one has a leg up because he knows more than one language.
Well, I think Navarrette may be engaging in some misplaced value judgments of his own in the last paragraph quoted–I presume he’s referring to the slang and “txt” speak of teenagers, or something along those lines. Many teens are fully capable of expressing themselves in more than one mode, so they shouldn’t be scolded for that. Other teens have been raised in text-poor environments with drastically underfunded schools and few opportunities to cultivate a love of reading and self-expression. Adult voters and politicians are to blame for that. If, however, he is referring to those teens who have plenty of opportunities but simply ignore them, then I can agree with him. And I definitely feel that English-only policies reflect a stunning belittling and devaluing of the notions of communication, cosmopolitanism, and genuine literacy, as well as a peculiar kind of entitlement-based blindness about the rest of the world and the future.
Despite my nitpick above, I was moved by Navarrette’s column and I feel that it’s worth reading and sharing. You can read the rest of the piece, “Afraid of Anything but English?”, at the newspaper’s website.
Filed under current events | Comment (0)TESOL-related news
Where do you get your TESOL-related news? An easy way to keep up with big and small stories is to check TESall.com’s Headline News Ticker for Teachers. This “news ticker” collects links to all kinds of English-language online news articles and blog posts. Although they generally link only to English articles, the coverage is truly international. In fact, if you’re an ESL teacher working in an English-dominant country, TESALL is a good way to get the big picture about the English-teaching and English-learning situations in other parts of the world. I think it’s important for us to be connected to the larger English education world, since it can help us understand our students and better understand our colleagues. (Okay, some of the stories are funny, too, or just downright strange.)
You can subscribe via RSS or check the website, and catch up on everything from crime to language policy. Note that the articles linked are from a variety of sources, so you may need to look for other sources to verify a particular news item. Ads are also mixed in. But where else can you get headlines about the Portland celebration of the birthday of the first foreigner to teach English in Japan, the move to teach English to first graders in Bahrain, and teaching English and Taekwondo together–all on one page?
Filed under current events, recommendations | Comment (1)Helping Burma and China
Today has been a strange day–I’m still mentally dealing with the gargantuan disasters in Burma and China, but I’m also relieved that the human rights situation in the United States has improved marginally, with the probable legalization of same-sex marriage in California.
I guess TESOL people tend to have global connections and an interest in the world at large–in fact, I find a lot more TESOL professionals with “citizen of the world” mentalities than I do in most other fields. Anyway, although this isn’t directly related to the usual topics here, I wanted to pass on a couple of ways that you can help with the disasters in Burma/Myanmar and China:
A former instructor of mine from the TESOL certification program at CSUEB recommends donating through the US Campaign for Burma. You’ll need to tick a box if you want your donation to go to post-cyclone disaster relief (their usual focus is human rights, I believe). She says “despite what you are reading in the news - aid is getting through - slowly, but getting there.”
Those in China who were affected by the earthquake there seem to be in a somewhat better situation, but there’s no such thing as a good situation in these kinds of massive events. I don’t have any personal recommendations from anyone in China, but the most frequently mentioned avenue for sending aid is Red Cross of China. If you have a better suggestion, please leave a comment.
I imagine that at some point in the future, when the immediate health crises have eased somewhat, there will be calls for rebuilding schools and libraries. I’ll try to post information when I get it. Let me know if you hear anything when the time comes.
Thank you!
Filed under current events | Comment (1)
