Court rules 'Talking while Spanish' grounds for expulsion at Kansas school

[Dennis Baron]

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

Court rules 'Talking while Spanish' grounds for expulsion at Kansas
school

U.S. district court judge J. Thomas Marten ruled Friday that an
English-only school policy at St. Anne Catholic School in Wichita,
Kansas, violated no laws, and that the offense that has come to be
called 'talking while Spanish' was grounds for expulsion in the
private elementary school....

Judge Marten rejected [the plaintiffs'] claims, ruling that it's
perfectly o.k. to ban Spanish in school. He further found that the
school's English-only rule had been in place for too short a time to
create a hostile learning environment, and so it wasn't illegal.

Although the judge didn't seem to consider how expulsion might impact
the learning environment at St. Anne's, he did chastise the school for
not anticipating the impact that the English-only rule would have on
those affected, and for not consulting with students and parents
before implementing the policy.


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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

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