[Paulus Invictus]

Many of the Chicanos that took Spanish 101 with me, flunked out and left the class, never to return. Passing strange, until I realized their folks had been in LA for 50 years speaking Spanish while their kids ignored the language and learned English at school and on the street. More than half of the Mexican kids at our HS at the time did not speak Spanish, or claimed they didn't.

[Under the Radar]

Many of the Chicanos that took Spanish 101 with me, flunked out and left the class, never to return. Passing strange, until I realized their folks had been in LA for 50 years speaking Spanish while their kids ignored the language and learned English at school and on the street. More than half of the Mexican kids at our HS at the time did not speak Spanish, or claimed they didn't.

The only problem with this is that, as I learned growing up on the U.S./Mexico border, these kids are illiterate in both English and Spanish. It is correct to say that they don't speak Spanish fluently. It is also true that they don't speak English fluently. Many of them cannot stay in one language for more than a few minutes, and that is very, very sad. Those cheering that assimilation is working need to look more closely.