Tuesday, December 24, 2002
Merry Christmas
|posted by Jim on 11:20 AM|
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Why So Few Updates Lately?
Mainly, a lack of English-related news. Will try to post more often, but only as events demand. And unlike Scrooge's firm, English First will be open just a half day on Christmas Eve and all of Christmas Day. But if Tiny Tim endorses bilingual education, you will read about it here. And if you see something, please e-mail it to news@englishfirst.org.
|posted by Jim on 6:22 PM|
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Assimilation Not Always Good
The Associated Press reports that foreign-born Latinos are far more conservative than native-born Latinos.
|posted by Jim on 6:10 PM|
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002
South Dakota Vote Fraud Update
FOX News carried a report on South Dakota vote fraud tonight. This item jumped out at me: "If the voter came in and gave a name -- if they couldn't find the name, they'd look under another name. Then sometimes they'd look for third name until they found one that matched." The reason: I had said in National Review Online prior to the election that "all anyone needs to sway this year's South Dakota Senate race is a list of fraudulently registered Indian voters, a willingness to round up a few Indians and a bus to bring them to a polling place." To successfully play this name game, some people had to have lists.
|posted by Jim on 2:17 AM|
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Monday, December 09, 2002
How to contact the St. Paul School Board
By telephone and e-mail.
|posted by Jim on 5:06 PM|
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Is It Too Much to Ask . . .
St. Paul's mullahs of multiculturalism to stop disparaging beloved symbols of this unique American nation?
|posted by Jim on 4:59 PM|
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Minnesota Students May No Longer to Pledge Allegiance Only in English
A committee of the St. Paul (MN) school board recently decided not only to make the Pledge of Allegiance optional but to "to offer translations of the pledge into other languages to students who request them." At least "indivisible" is spelled the same way in both English and Spanish.
|posted by Jim on 4:16 PM|
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Friday, December 06, 2002
Paul O'Neill Resigns
Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill resigned today. O'Neill was the only Bush Cabinet Secretary eager to enforce Clinton Executive Order 13166.
|posted by Jim on 11:32 AM|
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Wednesday, December 04, 2002
"Keep the U.S. English Speaking"
says John Hewko in today's Christian Science Monitor. An excerpt:
Being thrown into an English-speaking world without a bilingual education parachute didn't mean that my parents left their Ukrainian heritage behind or failed to pass it along to us children. At home and at church, we spoke Ukrainian and each Saturday my siblings and I were sent to a school organized and financed by the Ukrainian community in Detroit where we studied Ukrainian language, history, and culture. I went to kindergarten knowing very little English. However, by the end of the year, my parents found they were fighting an increasingly losing battle to keep me from speaking only English. A balance was struck. On public time, my world was English speaking. During the weekends and at home, it was Ukrainian. The system worked. And we became full-fledged English-speaking Americans without sacrificing our ancestral heritage.
|posted by Jim on 5:44 PM|
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Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Reminder: Spanish Varies
Education Week reports:
Several members of the governing board and consultants to the board also warned that translating the NAEP reading test into Spanish could set off debates over whether the test should be an option for all test-takers across the United States whose primary language is Spanish.
But Mr. Haertel cautioned that should a Spanish- language version be developed for Puerto Rico, the test still might not be appropriate for other Spanish-speaking students because the language differences between Spanish-speakers on the island and in the United States are considerable.
|posted by Jim on 5:59 PM|
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Bilingual Education Supporter Invokes the UN
From "Bilingual Education Is A Human and Civil Right":
The current attack on bilingual education denies children a basic human and civil right - the right to learn in their native language. Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989 (and ratified by all
nations except the United States and Somalia) states that "the education of the child should be directed to ... the development of
respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values." Article 30 states that "a child belonging to an
[ethnic, religious, or linguistic minority] should not be denied the right ... to use his or her own language."
|posted by Jim on 5:43 PM|
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