“The school says the policy was a response to problems in school environment, saying that if a student uses a language other than English to speak ill of others that it’s not fair.”
Not that I side with the plaintiffs in this case, but this defense, the “people might be talking about other students behind their backs” defense is really very stupid. How about just English is the language of life and commerce in this country. In order for the students to be successful in their lives they must speak English and we will only speak English in this school so that they have lots of practice toward total proficiency.
You make a great point,unfortunately the powers that be won't even address it because it makes too much sense! I grew up in Miami and attended both a Catholic grade school and high school. That was throughout the 60s and we often had Cuban refugee students joining the class during the school year. The nuns would allow them to get acclimated for a month or two and then they HAD to try to respond in class in English. The sisters went out of their way to give the Cuban girls, I went to all girls schools, extra instruction to help them learn to read and write English. By the end of the year it was amazing what they could do. Sure the language they spoke and wrote was very broken and rudimentary, but by gosh it was English.