Got a great chunk of information in today's mail from Birdville Independent School District -- a glossy, full-color package of helpful news and back-to-school details piled into a magazine-like publication called "Partnership Newsletter."
I'm sure that most recipients enjoyed the cover shot: an endearing little boy offering an apple to the camera. Stereotypical for a certain demographic but no less endearing.
But this was a two-part package. The back half was presented in Spanish, an approach that surely riled many English-speakers throughout these parts who protest the use of other languages in public education. I can hear them now: "Quit glorifying other languages. This is America. We speak English. Learn it or leave."
I thought about that group as I leafed through BISD's magazine and admired their effort to help parents get up to speed on back-to-school issues. I don't know how many anti-ESL and anti-anything-except-English people I talked with either on the phone or by e-mail while I was the Star-Telegram's reader advocate. Their complaint: The liberal media were soft with their coverage of ESL and other programs that in their view did not crack the whip on forcing non-English-speaking students to learn the Queen's English.
I don't have documentation to show the progress that non-English speakers are making in building proficiency in English, but I've heard inspiring stories along that line.
Just this week, I learned about a young woman who came to the U.S. with her family from Mexico when she was 5 and couldn't speak a word of English.
Guess what.
She learned English. She was passionate about doing so. And after a string of academic victories at Tarrant County College and Southern Methodist University, she now holds her baccalaureate degree from SMU and just returned from Paris (France) where she pursued post-graduate work. Not bad for someone who once was a little Spanish-speaking girl who was passionate about learning English -- and, I suppose, French. How many of us can speak three languages much less two?
For the most part, Americans are descended from people who couldn't speak a lick of English when they got here. In the 19th and early 20th century, many newspapers in the U.S. were published in German and other languages of the immigrants because their readers couldn't speak a lick of English. But they learned. So will other new Americans. May take a couple of generations, but it will happen.
So all of this is just to say: Hats off to BISD for making communication a top priority -- in Spanish as well as English. And not being intimidated by those who evidently have forgotten that many of their ancestors came here not knowing a verb from a pronoun -- in English.
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