'Talking while Spanish' on trial in Wichita

Dennis Baron debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU
Sat Aug 16 04:43:16 UTC 2008


There's a new post on the Web of Language:

''Talking while Spanish' on trial in Wichita

In 2007, St. Anne School, a Wichita Catholic elementary school ordered
its students to speak only English while on school grounds. Students
and parents were asked to sign formsacknowledging the new policy.

A separate letter to students signed by the principal, Sister Margaret
Nugent, threatened consequences for noncompliance, and several
students who didn't sign were expelled.

Three families whose students were expelled then sued St. Anne's in
federal court to reverse the school's English-only policy and
decriminalize "talking while Spanish."

At the trial, which began in Wichita earlier this week, one student
became so emotional while testifying about the discrimination he faced
for speaking Spanish that the judge had to call a recess. Later the
same day, the student's mother told the court about a hate-filled
email, written by a student and sent to other students and parents,
telling Hispanics to go home if they didn't like the new language
policy.

Although the school already had a no-bullying policy, Sr. Nugent
testified that she implemented the English-only policy to stop
students from using Spanish to bully children and make derogatory
comments about the staff. The principal didn't indicate why the "go
back where you came from" email was not considered bullying.

WKSN, Wichita's NBC affiliate, reported the trial on the air and on
its web site, and allowed readers to comment. Responses show that
language choice is an emotional issue, one that reflects attitudes
about immigrants and cocnern about who gets to make the rules.

Support for the school ranged from "it's a private school, they can do
what they want" to arguments where "we" (true-blue American speakers
of English who, even though "we" are the descendants of immigrants,
are tired of the self-serving demands of immigrants) are invariably
opposed to "them" (ungrateful and unpatriotic foreigners unwilling to
make an effort to assimilate and who talk about "us" in a language we
can't understand):

read what WKSN viewers actually said, and why they felt "talking while
Spanish" is either a crime, or a conspiracy to commit a crime, on the
Web of Language

____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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