From Clark County Indiana Democrat Weblog

[Harold F. Schiffman]

I'll have Freedom Fries with that pleeze

My family and I got the chance to take a little jaunt to Paris over the
Thanksgiving Holiday. (That would be Paris France and not Paris, KY.
Several people asked me...truly. ) This brought to mind those emails we've
all gotten about "English as the official language in the United States".
So after that brief spell in a place where there's not much English
spoken,here are my thoughts about that English only movement:

Perhaps we should have an "official" language in our country to keep us
unified. I think we have a de facto official language in English. But hey,
if it makes people feel better to say so... go ahead.

HOWEVER...we will lose the business "wars" and other "wars" if we think
that we can simply get by with having English only as a language these
days in the big wide world made even wider by TV, Internet, and airplanes.

Therefore, my language policy- if elected- will be that our children will
learn English well (and the rest of you better start boning up because
there will be a test and if you do poorly then you're going back to school
and learning proper English by diagramming sentences, by God).

In addition, everyone will start learning some other language. I don't
really care what other language you all learn, but you jolly well better
start learning something besides English. Our government is supposedly
short on Arabic speakers, and they tell us that China is our next big
competitor in the area of business. I've learned that if I want to spread
the Gospel, there is probably some African language I should be learning,
too. So pick one and learn it. NO whining. Learning is good for you.

When you've got that one figured out- learn another one. We now have
"English Language Learners" (ELL not ESL) at my school, because the kids
we're getting aren't learning English as a "second language" they are
learning English as a third or perhaps fourth language! So to keep up,
we'd better get on the stick and insist that the kids here do likewise.

http://clarkcountydems.blogspot.com/
***********************************************************************************

N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.

***********************************************************************************