Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Ben.  The gist:

"Teachers that don't pass muster may take classes or other steps to improve
their English; if fluency continues to be a problem, Ms. Santa Cruz said, it
is up to school districts to decide whether to fire teachers or reassign
them to mainstream classes not designated for students still learning to
speak English."

Obviously this policy may be abused - like many other things I can think
of.  But is Arizona really the only state to have such a policy?

Is there any reason to believe, on the basis of facts, that the Arizona
Department of Education is trying to target teachers for disgrace and
dismissal because they're Hispanic and even though they're U.S. citizens
or legal residents? No. Is Arizona a "police state"? No.  Is having an
accent a "crime" in Arizona?  No.

Are these (and I refer solely to those in the previous paragraph ) phony
issues revved up for shock value by controversialists, attention-seekers,
and half-baked bloggers? Sure looks like it.

What the Department of Education says it's doing is checking to see
that all  ESL teachers are fluent enough and intelligible enough to teach
classes effectively. How well and fairly that policy will be carried out
remains to be seen, but so far nobody seems to have been publicly
humiliated, fired, deported, or jailed, and it seems unlikely that anybody
will be or even could be.

JL
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This was originally reported in the Wall Street Journal on 4/30:
>
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html
>
> Here's the response from faculty at the Univ. of Arizona Department of
> Linguistics:
>
> http://www.u.arizona.edu/~hammond/ling_statement_final.pdf
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The blogosphere is ablaze with condemnations of the "law." I'm beginning
> to
> > wonder very seriously if there even is one:
> >
> >
> http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/22/arizona-seeks-reassign-heavily-accented-teachers/
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> The precise wording of the law is elduing me, but here are a couple of
> >> seemingly useful sites. The first gives some background; the second is
> the
> >> CNN report:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html
> >>
> >>
> http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/24/arizona-wants-to-reassign-teachers-with-accents/
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:31 AM, George Thompson <
> george.thompson at nyu.edu
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Arizona has decided that it's unacceptable to have teachers
> >> > > > whose spoken English is deemed to be heavily accented or
> >> > > > ungrammatical, even
> >> > > > though the latter has little to do with the former.
>
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>



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