Jewish World Review Oct. 4, 2002 / 28 Tishrei, 5763

Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Learning English from Day 1

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | If I were a Hispanic American, I would feel humiliated every time an automated telephone-answering system prompted me to press 1 for English, or 2 for Spanish. I would wince every time an ATM machine invited me to conduct my transaction en Espanol. It would mortify me to click on a government web site -- www.WhiteHouse.gov, for example, or www.irs.gov -- and find a link to the site's elaborate Spanish-language section.

If I were Hispanic, I would be ashamed that so many American institutions take it for granted that people like me can't understand English. I would notice that there were never any telephone prompts or hyperlinks for Italian or Hindi or Japanese. It would be obvious to me that no one assumes that German-, Arab-, or Vietnamese-Americans are unable to communicate in English. Only Hispanics are taken for dullards for whom the American national language is just too tough to master. I don't know which would depress me more: the knowledge that my fellow citizens feel obliged to condescend to Hispanics in this manner, or my sense that so many Hispanics prefer it that way.

That's how I would feel if I were Hispanic. In fact, however, I am the son of a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, who immigrated to America in 1948. The only English he knew when he arrived were the words he'd picked up on the boat coming over. But like millions of immigrants before him, and like scores of others he met after settling in Cleveland, he made learning English an urgent priority.

And so two nights a week, he took the bus to a public high school that offered English classes for adults; on a third night he attended another English class at the Jewish community center. To practice their new language, my father and his friends formed a New Americans Club, which organized Sunday outings during which everyone was expected to speak English. His grammar isn't perfect and he never lost his accent, but for the past half-century, English has been my father's primary language.

America in the '40s and '50s didn't make life easy for non-English-speakers, a fact for which I am deeply grateful. My father was forced to learn English; it was the prerequisite to American life. I don't know that he would have been as diligent about getting on that bus three nights a week if Cleveland's banks had provided Slovak-speaking tellers or if government forms had been available in Hungarian or if schools had routinely shunted the children of Jewish immigrants into "bilingual" classes taught in Yiddish. (My father was fluent in all three.) Fortunately, not learning English was not an option; my father had to acquire the common American tongue. His life has been better for it -- and so has mine.

What triggers these reflections is the debate over ballot measures in Massachusetts and Colorado that would put an end to traditional bilingual education. Instead of letting non-English-speaking children languish in "transitional" bilingual classes for years, the proposed measures -- Question 2 in Massachusetts, Amendment 31 in Colorado -- would require them to enter a one-year English-immersion program. Similar ballot questions won handily in California in 1998 and Arizona in 2000.

When bilingual education was first introduced, it was possible for reasonable people to disagree about the most effective way to teach English to children from non-English-speaking homes. By now, the evidence of bilingual's failure is so voluminous that only ideologues and the willfully blind can claim that it is superior to early immersion in English.

"The accumulated research of the past 30 years reveals almost no justification for teaching children in their native languages to help them learn either English or other subjects," wrote Rosalie Pedalino Porter in The Atlantic Monthly. "Self-esteem is not higher among limited-English students who are taught in their native languages, and stress is not higher among children who are introduced to English from the first day of school -- though self-esteem and stress are the factors most often cited by advocates of bilingual teaching."

Porter's bona fides on this topic are sterling: She used to teach Spanish-language bilingual classes in Springfield and later became the director of bilingual education in Newton. In 2000 she was named co-chairman of the Massachusetts Bilingual Education Advisory Council. She became an English-immersion advocate only after many years of believing in the status quo. All across the country, there are educators like Porter -- bilingual teachers and administrators who could no longer go on denying the truth: Students learn English fastest when they learn it from Day 1.

The enemies of English-immersion will say anything to discredit those who press for reform. At a rally at the Massachusetts State House this week, Question 2 was denounced by the president of the state AFL-CIO as "hateful and spiteful;" Ron Unz, the California businessman who has been the moving force behind these ballot measures, was compared by the head of the Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce to a Nazi. The thuggishness of such "arguments" says much about what the bilingual industry has become and the lengths to which it will go to protect its empire. If I were Hispanic, there is nothing I would want more than to see that empire dismantled.

Like this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

09/30/02: The world will follow us to war
09/27/02: The face of antisemitism
09/20/02: Starving time in Zimbabwe
09/14/02: Against moral confusion / 9-12-2002
09/03/02: With 'eternal friends' like these
08/30/02: Enriching survivors was a costly mistake
08/26/02: John Kerry's absent passion
08/23/02: Bonnie, get your gun
08/19/02: A screenwriter's remorse
07/29/02: The real abortion extremists
07/26/02: Another round of Kemp-Roth
07/19/02: Jews among Arabs, Arabs among Jews
07/15/02: Musings, random and otherwise
07/12/02: The new civil rights champions
07/03/02: Riding the rails
07/01/02: The prerequisite to peace
06/24/02: Frisking AlGore
06/17/02: Offense, not defense, is the key to homeland security
06/14/02: Looking at the horror
06/07/02: The cost of a death-penalty moratorium
06/03/02: Executing 'children,' and other death-penalty myths
05/29/02: A real threat?
05/24/02: The message in Arafat's headdress
05/20/02: (Mis)playing the popularity card
05/10/02: Outspoken, Muslim -- and moderate
05/10/02: The heroes in Castro's jails
05/06/02: The disappearing history term paper
05/03/02: Musings, random and otherwise
04/29/02: The canary in Europe's mine
04/15/02: Powell's crazy mission
04/12/02: The slavery reparations hustle
04/08/02: Peace at any price = war
03/26/02: Decency matters most, Caleb
03/22/02: The U.S. embargo and Cuba's future
03/19/02: The keepers of Cuba's conscience
03/15/02: A walk in Havana
02/26/02: Buchanan's lament
02/12/02: What 'peace' means to Arafat
02/08/02: STEVEN EMERSON AND THE NPR BLACKLIST
02/05/02: Antismoking: Who pays?
02/01/02: Turn the Saudis
01/25/02: Making MLK cry
01/21/02: Ted to tax cut: Drop dead
01/18/02: Musings random and otherwise
01/14/02: An ultimatum to Saudi Arabia
01/11/02: Friendship, Saudi-style
01/07/02: Shakedown at Harvard
01/04/02: More guns, more safety
01/02/02: Smears and slanders from the Left
12/28/01: Congress gives to others -- and itself
12/24/01: The littlest peacemakers
12/20/01: How to condemn terror
12/18/01: Greenland once was
12/14/01: Parents who never said ''no''
12/11/01: Wit and (economic) wisdom
12/07/01: THE PALESTINIANS' MYTH
12/04/01: The war against Israel goes on
11/30/01: Tribunals, motorcycles -- and freedom
11/19/01: Friendship and the House of Saud
11/12/01: The Justice Department's unjust monopoly
11/09/01: Muslim, but not extremist
11/02/01: Too good for Oprah
10/29/01: Journalism and the 'neutrality fetish'
10/26/01: Derail these subsidies
10/22/01: Good and evil in the New York Times
10/15/01: Rush Limbaugh's ear
10/08/01: With allies like these
10/01/01: An unpardonable act
09/28/01: THE CENSORS ARE COMING! THE CENSORS ARE COMING!
09/25/01: Speaking out against terror
09/21/01: What the terrorists saw
09/17/01: Calling evil by its name
09/13/01: Our enemies mean what they say
09/04/01: The real bigots
08/31/01: Shrugging at genocide
08/28/01: Big Brother's privacy -- or ours?
08/24/01: The mufti's message of hate
08/21/01: Remembering the 'Wall of Shame'
08/16/01: If I were the editor ...
08/14/01: If I were the Transportation Czar ...
08/10/01: Import quotas 'steel' from us all
08/07/01: Is gay "marriage" a threat?
08/03/01: A colorblind nominee
07/27/01: Eminent-domain tortures
07/24/01: On protecting the flag ... and drivers ... and immigrants
07/20/01: Dying for better mileage
07/17/01: Why Americans would rather drive
07/13/01: Do these cabbies look like bigots?
07/10/01: 'Defeated in the bedroom'
07/06/01: Who's white? Who's Hispanic? Who cares?
07/02/01: Big(oted) man on campus
06/29/01: Still appeasing China's dictators
06/21/01: Cuban liberty: A test for Bush
06/19/01: The feeble 'arguments' against capital punishment
06/12/01: What energy crisis?
06/08/01: A jewel in the crown of self-government
05/31/01: The settlement myth
05/25/01: An award JFK would have liked
05/22/01: No Internet taxes? No problem
05/18/01: Heather has five mommies (and a daddy)
05/15/01: An execution, not a lynching
05/11/01: Losing the common tongue
05/08/01: Olympics 2008: Say no to Beijing
05/04/01: Do welfare mothers a kindness: Make them work
05/01/01: Another man's child
04/24/01: Sharon should have said no
04/02/01: The Inhumane Society
03/30/01: To have a friend, Caleb, be a friend
03/27/01: Is Chief Wahoo racist?
03/22/01: Ending the Clinton appeasement
03/20/01: They're coming for you
03/16/01: Kennedy v. Kennedy
03/13/01: We should see McVeigh die
03/09/01: The Taliban's wrecking job
03/07/01: The No. 1 reason to cut taxes
03/02/01: A Harvard candidate's silence on free speech
02/27/01: A lesson from Birmingham jail
02/20/01: How Jimmy Carter got his good name back
02/15/01: Cashing in on the presidency
02/09/01: The debt for slavery -- and for freedom
02/06/01: The reparations calculation
02/01/01: The freedom not to say 'amen'
01/29/01: Chavez's 'hypocrisy': Take a closer look
01/26/01: Good-bye, good riddance
01/23/01: When everything changed (mostly for the better)
01/19/01: The real zealots
01/16/01: Pardon Clinton?
01/11/01: The fanaticism of Linda Chavez
01/09/01: When Jerusalem was divided
01/05/01 THEY NEVER FORGOT THEE, O JERUSALEM
12/29/00 Liberal hate speech, 2000
12/15/00Does the Constitution expect poor children be condemned to lousy government schools?
12/08/00 Powell is wrong man to run State Department
12/05/00 The 'MCAS' teens give each other
12/01/00 Turning his back on the Vietnamese -- again
11/23/00 Why were the Pilgrims thankful?
11/21/00 The fruit of this 'peace process' is war
11/13/00 Unleashing the lawyers
11/17/00 Gore's mark on history
40 reasons to say NO to Gore

© 2002, Boston Globe