Quote:
Originally posted by taxwonk
I am all in favor of bilingual households and holding on to one's culture and heritage of origin, including the language of your ancestors. I live in an area where there are many Spanish, Polish, Arabic, and numerous Asian and Eastern European language speakers, many of whom speak only their native tongue in the home.
Our school district has a good-sized at-risk education program, complete with a number of schools particularly for at-risk students. The program isn't for crack babies or kids who were born with fetal alcohol syndrome. It doesn't have a lot of gang members. Illietracy in general isn't a problem. The at-risk population is almost exclusively made up of kids who hit first grade, or enter the system at whatever grade, with little or no grasp of the English language.
When culture begins to threaten your childrens' ability to grow up and achieve in school, it's time to think about speaking more English.
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I do think that having ballot measures etc. presented in languages other than English is a good idea, in terms of representative democracy. I think Spanky or club or whoever presented it as a "stop signs won't ahve to be in 12 languages, like they are now" issue, and RT is presenting it as "it will mean that people will be asked to vote on things that they can't understand" and I think you aren't allowed to bring someone with you into the voting booth to translate or whatever, so I can see where it's a different issue w/r/t voting.
