Re: [ADS-L] It take s more than a language to unify a nation

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 2/24/07 3:32:47 PM, gcohen at UMR.EDU writes:


>      No system is perfect, but the vision of the U.S. as a melting pot 
> worked well for our grandparents and greatgrandparents, and it might not be so 
> bad for the present either.
> 

Well, I dunno. The melting pot worked will enough for those who wanted to 
exploit foreign workers. And it certainly worked EVENTUALLY for my family, but 
not forf the first tow generatrions: my grandparents were born in IOWA and grew 
up speaking Swedish and left school in the third grade. It wasn't until my 
mother's generation that anyone had the linguistic and economic resources to 
finish high school--much less vote.

Of course, I don't suppose that things would have been any better for my 
grandparents if they had had ballots printed in Swedish--they were illiterate in 
that language, too.

But I'd feel a lot more comfortable about the arguments of the English-only 
folks if they supported truly massive English teaching projects for non-English 
speakers. By belief and understanding, as the lawyers say, what free adult 
English-teaching classes are offered to the foreign-born are always way 
oversubscribed, even given the fact that all the hard-working gardeners and maids and 
plasterers who do not know very much English must go to classes after long 
days of heavy hard work.

I wish every person who contributes a dollar to the English-only movement 
would also contribute to their local Hispanic Centere for English-language 
teaching.


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