Poll: Language a barrier for Latinos in schools

AP on Yahoo ^ | 8/5/10 | Hope Yen and Christine Armorio- ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON – English only?

With Hispanic enrollment surging in schools, many Spanish-speaking parents are having trouble helping their children with homework or communicating with U.S. teachers as English-immersion classes proliferate in K-12.

An Associated Press-Univision poll highlights the language and cultural obstacles for the nation's Latinos, who lag behind others when it comes to graduating from high school.

The findings also raise questions about whether English-immersion does more to assimilate or isolate — a heated debate that has divided states, academics and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona recently ordered its schools to remove teachers with heavy foreign accents from English-language instruction, while the Obama administration is seeking to push more multilingual teaching in K-12 classrooms.

[FormerACLUmember]

Learn English.

Be Successful.

[frithguild]

Cry me a river

[NormsRevenge]

http://surveys.ap.org/data%5CNORC%5CAP-Univision%20Topline_posting.pdf

[jessduntno]

“Learn English. Be Successful.”

Stay in Mexico. Be a Mexican.

[ObamaBoogaBooga.com]

This is absolutely shocking. SHOCKING!

[kittymyrib]

Education of Latinos also suffers because many are more interested in gang activities than studying. Also the girls are getting pregnant at younger and younger ages.

[dfwgator]

Then they can go back to Mexico, problem solved.

[Altura Ct.]

cultural obstacles for the nation's Latinos

Which nation?

We used to be a nation once.

[RexBeach]

Boy, what a suprise. They needed a study to discover this?

Boneheads.

[elpinta]

Normal immigrants ‘want’ to learn English BEFORE moving here (I did).
Illegals ‘want’ to hang on to their language and culture and they try to propagate it here.

[massgopguy]

Well then they can do the jobs Americans won’t do.......for the Asian kids they went to school with that got the good grades.

[Puppage]

Bushes fault

[forgotten man]

The problem is much more than lack of English language ability. In Mexico most people go to school for a few years. When a kid is big enough to work the parents take them out of school. Families are sub literates generation after generation. Even if we give the kids here a education in Spanish, their parents cannot help the kids with their homework because the parents can barely read Spanish. Education is not as important in their culture as it is in our American culture.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

So lets teach them Chinese. Afterall, they will be the ones running things in a few years.

[pnh102]

Learn English. Every other foreigner who comes here does it.

[dennisw]

A lot of the illegals we get DON’T EVEN SPEAK SPANISH. They speak Indian dialects. The Spanish racist ruling class is pushing their Indians and semi-Indians into the USA. This is an Indian invasion. Mexico always treated their Indians like crap. No billion dollar casinos for them. Mexico’s rulers are laughing themselves silly as they send their unresolved “Indian problems” into the USA

Guatemala and El Salvador are the same. They send their Indians and semi-Indians to America. Plus the ones from Guatemala are just about all Mayan Indians. Not semi-Indians, also known as Mestizos

[silverleaf]

I brought home 2 4 yr old Russian speaking kids
They didn’t need my help with their preschool homework
They were conversant in English within a month and fluent in English within 4 months - in reading and language arts both now rank in the 90th percentile for 6th graders

BTW- the schools wanted to put them in ESL - with spanish speakers. We declined. The same kids persist in esl for years “They don’t hear English at home”.

BS. Turn on the TV and radio.

[RobRoy]

No comprende.

[righttackle44]

English is being taught in Asian and Southeast Asian countries, Germany, Italy and other places, much to the chagrin of some French elitists. English has replaced French as the language of commerce and diplomacy. If Mexicans refuse to learn English, then they are going to be selling to poor South American countries and Mexico.

But more than that, Mexicans are becoming arrogant about not learning English. Okay. Kick them out of our Arizona schools en masse and let them make their own way. Even illegal immigrants have learned that they can make their way through our university system if they know English.