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I just find it disingenuous for someone to use the language as a substitute for the real target - the people that speak spanish.

You've just accused anyone who isn't willing to cede our American culture to other foreign cultures of being a xenophobe.

This is not about "targeting" anyone. If a Mexican family wants to come across the border - legally - to seek a better life and future for themselves and their children, they are acting in the best tradition of each of our forbears, no matter who they were, what color, or what dialect. This is hope: hope with the expectation to become an American, work hard, and achieve the American dream. Absolutely nothing wrong with this.

It IS, however, about preserving the very culture that made them want to come here in the first place. Would a multicultural America, built on the sifting sands of postmodern meaninglessness and existential despair, provide any basis for hope? We must, must, MUST, consider the implications of this, and consider what America will look like - economically, culturally, politically - in 20 years, 50 years, 100 years if we continue sailing our present course.

In Mount Vernon, like so many other communities in our country, there are large contingents of non English speaking immigrants. Are the Russians,Dutch,Swedish,Norwegians, expecting American taxpayers to teach their children in THEIR native languages? No. They want their children to learn "the English" but yet retain their culture and share it with us. Hard working legal immigrants have always been welcome in America!

The topic of this thread is that in some schools, the government is forcing one foreign language over the others and people will resent that. Spanish has been one of the offered languages in many schools for many years ----- no problem --- but something else is going on with this. They eliminated the other foreign languages in many of the high schools here and require all kids to take Spanish --- that isn't right.