¿Habla Español? Your kids may soon

Skagit Valley Herald ^ | 12/01/03 | STEVE HOWIE

[Khurkris]

Mi burrito es su burrito.

[ctonious]

"Quire papases fritas con eso?"

[SAMWolf]

No way my kids would be attending that school. They's have to have the cops come get them and I'd get some of them before they got to my kids.

[Scenic Sounds]

Soy cómodo con el fuego blando. ;-)

[wardaddy]

Usted tiene una voz que sea hermosa en todas las idiomas. Y brilla como el sol. ;-)

Siento amor aqui! Que linda!

[SAJ]

Mi Tio es infermo, pero la carretera es verde. (courtesy: Mad Magazine, c. 1966)

Outside of a restaurant, that's all the Spanish this multi-lingual person's ever needed.

[DefCon]

I learned this from watching "Leave It To Beaver"
on TV back in the '60's!

"Usted tiene una cara como un puerco."

Eddie Haskell got the Beaver in big trouble with that one !

[onedoug]

Estoy en acuerdo de Clara Lou. Ingles primero. Qualquier otra lengua es mucho mas mejor como una idioma segunda.

[ctonious]

O, ahora Jorge dice a Mexico "Mi Alamo es su Alamo"..

[irishtenor]

Hey, everybody... want to get rich? All you have to do is set up a private school up there. People will be clammering to get in.

[Poohbah]

Outside of a restaurant, that's all the Spanish this multi-lingual person's ever needed.

I didn't know anyone else played 43-man Squamish...

[JusPasenThru]

Spot on! I have no idea what that means, but my daughter is a Spanish major in college, so I'll ask her.

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

Please remove me from this ping list....again

[SAJ]

I didn't know anyone remembered that hilarious little article besides me. Great memory you have!

Free Republic is amazing in that regard, no?

[JusPasenThru]

Mi cerveza es Dos Equis.

[gubamyster]

Please remove me from this ping list....again

Done

[ReagansShinyHair]

"It's a big leap. I can understand a little hesitancy," Warner said. "It's hard for us as adults to understand the capacity that kids have for learning languages."

If kids always learn languages so easily, then why are the migrant kids' low test scores blamed on their low English skills?

I teach ESL. Hispanic students of migrant worker origin do not generally come from homes that value education. They do not read to their children at home. They take off for Mexico regularly, and students are absent for weeks to months to most of the school year, and then they return and get socially promoted to the next grade. I was just making progress with one kid, and now he's gone for ten weeks. He will return having lost a year's worth of progress. It has happened many times.

While parents in the small logging town were suspicious of the program at first, not a single student has transferred from the school since the conversion, Principal Steve Warner said.

Probably because the school offers morning and afternoon day-care. People fight to get into the montessori program at my school...because it offers full-day kindergarten. The program is full of kids who were obviously locked in a box until they turned old enough to go to school. Also, not ONE student? Nobody even moved away?

"Both students are getting a foreign language. Both students are getting primary content in their primary language," Armstrong said. "So, there's a benefit for all students involved."

This should say, "Both students are getting a smattering of their primary language. So, there's a handicap for all students involved."

There is also the problem of finding qualified teachers. I have watched education since the early 1980's in Southern California, and I saw the bilingual thing come and go. They hired the most incompetent people simply because they were bilingual. Well, technically, I would not say most of them were bilingual. They spoke one language, and it wasn't English. Once they were hired, it was extremely difficult to get rid of them.

[Dog Gone]

No, but there's little than can be done short of making our own version of the Berlin Wall, only 1000 miles longer. Even then, it would only slow it down. We have a bazillion miles of coastline, not to mention the Canadian border and even Alaska.

Bottom line is that if you want to sneak into America, there's nothing we can do to prevent it. We can only make it a little harder.

[DeFault User]

This is apparently not the bilingual debacle of California.

The Spanish speaking kids will be learning English and some of the English speaking kids will learn Spanish. Of course, if it's Tex-Mex instead of "standard" Spanish (as one poster warned against), it will be a mess.

With a total immersion program, these kids could learn the ohter language in 6 weeks (basic conversation anyway).

[ctonious]

Mi cerveza es Dos Equis

Mi favorita es una Imperial en el barre Blue Marlin en el Hotel infamoso Del Rey, en San Jose - Costa Rica. Soy muy malo...(psst muchos de diversion alla).