AS A RESPONSE to a minority of unhappy parents, Amendment 31 advocates the intense language training to non-English speaking students over the course of one year. Sound noble? There’s more. These lessons will be taught in total immersion, meaning no help in the child’s native language. And that’s not all. These lessons will be mainstream, meaning one way, one pace and essentially one chance.
Different children learned at different paces and it was the teacher’s job to accommodate and help ease the student’s struggle. How can that be done if the child has no idea of what is being said?
And let’s look at the flip side of the coin here: the escalation of liability for teachers. Under this amendment, a teacher can retrace a lesson back to the native language so the child can understand, only to become subject to a lawsuit and the loss of a teaching license for five years. Dedication to a student can be lost with the fear of unemployment. Parents have basically no say in all this, and even if they are lucky enough to have their child wavered, that still doesn’t take the teacher out of danger. The parents have up to 10 years to turn around and sue the school for their approved teaching methods.
I have seen the trauma a child encounters in not knowing surrounding action and the self-esteem blow felt when they struggle to understand another language, yet can’t because they can’t relate to their own. Are we really going to knock over the one crutch they still have to lean on? To take away the applicability of their native language would be nothing short of crippling to their intellect and self-concept. Is this what we want for our future generations? A society that forces conformity, no matter what the price?
Isn’t this hypocritical, since American students are still taught foreign languages with help in English? Rita Montero, the amendments chief proponent stated that today’s system treats Hispanic children as if they were incapable of becoming bilingual. Based on this system, what does that say about the intelligence level of Americans?
