Maryland: Frederick County orders library audio books English-only

[Harold Schiffman]

I have to weigh in on this one, because the idea that American libraries
should
only have books in English because they're tax-supported rests on the
premise
that all the information, and all the opinions we need to know about can be
obtained
through the English language. This relegates the contributions of millions
of
Americans whose linguistic heritage is other than that of English to
oblivion.

I have done research on the German-medium schools that thrived in this
country
during the 19th century, but the materials that are needed to do this
research
are increasingly being consigned  to the scrap heap.  We need to be
archiving
these materials, especially the many newspapers that were published in
various
languages, but unfortunately only a narrow selection of these are being
digitized.

My wife teaches in a high school in Camden, NJ, where a sizable percentage
of
the students are from Hispanic backgrounds, either Puerto Rican or
Dominican.
She often introduces them to literacy in Spanish, especially the great works
of
Spanish writers, poets, etc. and they are surprised and delighted to realize
that
they can often easily read Spanish despite never having been taught it.  But
because
of the dearth of materials available in public and school libraries, she has
to purchase
the materials herself in order to share them.

The idea that providing books in languages other than English will deter
people from
learning to read English is another version of those canards we hear
repeated in the
popular press in attacks on bilingual education.

Hal Schiffman




On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Ronald Kephart <rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:

> On 8/24/08 5:17 PM, "Robert Lawless" <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:
>
> > Don't those grave markers have to be remade in English.
>
> That would be logical. Check out the message J sent me:
>
> Thanks for your derisive e-mail, Mr. Kephart.  With regard to the opening
> sentence, let me ask you a question.  According to the U.N., there has been
> no warming since 1998, despite the unprecedented build-up of the economies
> of China and India.  Some science is indicating that the temperature
> variability has not moved and is within range since 1979.  How many more
> years of non-warming do you need to see before you stop believing
> everything
> the "mainstream" media tells you to believe?  While it is nice hyperbole to
> use the term "banning books" that isn't accurate either.  We actually do
> have limited resources.  My belief is that we should spend our resources on
> books in English.  I was indeed a Russian language major, and at no point
> when I needed or wanted books to read did I have the expectation that the
> taxpayers should foot the bill - that is, principally, what Republicans
> stand for, at least this Republican.  Cheers!
>
>
>


-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone: (215) 898-7475
Fax: (215) 573-2138

Email: haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

-------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20080825/c07cad8c/attachment.htm>