Posted on 12/29/2017 10:08:46 AM PST by Architect of Avalon
Stephanie Lugardo’s second-grade classroom at Academia Antonia Alonso in Wilmington, Delaware, is bubbling. Smiles break out on an array of faces, and the chatter spills out in English and Spanish.
This is an incarnation of a new American pluralism, one of the latest iterations of Walt Whitman’s “teeming nation of nations” flowering in “their curiosity and welcome of novelty.” Downstairs, in a kindergarten class, an African American student exclaims to her friend, “I know how to say that in Spanish!”
José Aviles, the head of Academia Antonia Alonso, describes the school as a sort of multicultural nirvana. “We tell parents, ‘Your kid is going to be surrounded by Latino kids, white kids, African American kids—we offer everyone the same education, the same quality, the same love,’” he told me.
Academia Antonia Alonso, which opened as a public charter school in 2014, was designed to meet the needs of a linguistically diverse population. School leaders took full advantage of the flexibility allowed to charters to launch what’s known as a “dual-immersion” program: Children learn in both English and Spanish and, ideally, become fully bilingual in the process. The students switch languages each school day—if a class runs in English on Tuesday, it switches to Spanish on Wednesday. (With some exceptions: For example, all the school’s capoeira classes are usually in Spanish—with a smattering of Portuguese.) The program also balances the linguistic makeup of each class of students through its enrollment process. About a third of the school’s children are formally recognized as English learners (ELs), students who are still developing basic proficiency in that language. Nearly two-thirds of the school’s students are Latino, while around half of those enrolled are native Spanish speakers; the other half are native English speakers.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Schools should teach in English.
I am amazed by how much they hate the very people that are giving them so much opportunity that they would never get anywhere else. Their sense entitlement and ungratefulness should be a very good reason to send them back where they came from. Especially if they are here illegally.
Sure; master that, then venture into other languages. American taxpayers are disgusted by these programs by which their tax dollars are basically paying for this BS for foreigners (while few American children are in the school systems).
Intrusion means they have no right to be there. Is that right? This is a blatantly racist article.
Isn’t teaching English racist? /sarc
Bilingual education has been a racket for decades, anyway. In major cities like NYC and Los Angeles it is just a way to push students into classes that require more teachers anyway -- basically a boondoggle for the teacher's unions.
There was a ridiculous scam in NYC about 25 years ago where schools were pushing children of recent immigrants into bilingual English-Spanish classes even though the kids were from immigrant families that didn't speak Spanish at home. I remember a big expose report on the subject in one of the NYC newspapers at the time, with a number of examples of kids in these programs who were from Korea, Bangladesh, the Middle East, etc.
Segregation today is caused by these entitled foreigners (legal or otherwise) consuming so much produced by Americans while contributing nothing but racial hatred. The destruction of the Catholic school system here in NJ is the free-market result of this phenomenon; how many ageing Catholics want their donations used to provide private education for foreigners who contribute nothing? Taxpayers are voting with their feet, leading to the same problem in our public school systems: Where are the Americans required to pay for this nonsense?
New Tagline
Yes—like they used to do when literacy rate was 97 percent.
How evil to teach in only “one” other language when we have many other languages spoken by all the immigrants we take in. Why favor one over the others.
It is evil and not equal to prefer one over all the others and a “justice system” can’t promote evil and remain a “just” system. The “schools” have to be closed down or teach English to all, since it is our language of all legal documents, so all immigrants have equal access to success in America.
Article is written using leftist drivel phrases and words. Should have been a barf alert.
For every other culture in the world academics acknowledge that FULL IMMERSION is the best way to assimilate.
They want Hispanics to retain their language so they can continue to EXPLOIT them at SLAVE WAGES, and make them politically dependent to encourage their ILLEGAL VOTES.
Just another vapid article trotting another obscure phenomena to blame on white, natural-born, U.S. citizens.
Boy, oh boy do, we suck, or what?
Blacks from “da hood” are having enough trouble with plain english. Now ya want them to learn spanish too !!
BWAHAHAHAHAHA ;o)
The comments here show ignorance of the real reason for Spanish language schools.
And that reason is dominance.
To the Hispanics the imposition of their language shows submission by the Gringos and eventual political subjugation.
It is this firstly and secondly a rejection of assimilation. “We ain’t gonna speak your language, Anglos...we gonna take over”.
In the Southwest this has been going on for 4 decades now.
In the 70’s I was told by Mexicans in Southern Arizona “someday you gonna speak Spanish”. In the early 90’s they said the same thing to me in Texas and this time I listened.
People on the East Coast don’t understand this yet, but they will as the onslaught continues. The fawning articles like this will try to paint it as happy multiculturalism but it is not. It is conquest by other means.
The war over bilingual education in California was only halted temporarily in the 90s with the passage of Prop. 227. But they will never quit, as that is seen as weakness in hispanic society, and unforgivable. Thus a school like this - discretionary now, compulsory later - is just a covert beach head for them in the never ending battle to subjugate the weakling gringos who somehow managed to best them at pretty much everything. They cannot let that stand.
Some one should tell these “race purists” that Spain and Portugal are both European, thus white, countries, just like England, France, Germany, Poland, and Italy. That if they want to be anti-European, aka anti-white, they need to each the students in either a west African language or a native American or Mezo-American language such as Cherokee or Aztec and NOT Spanish, Portuguese, or English!
Which states have English is the official language?
I actually wish there were more foreign language immersion schools. Children are language sponges and the best time to learn a language is as young as possible. Being taught in Spanish, or Mandarin, won’t prevent a child from learning English but will give the child an enormous life advantage. I say this as someone who found himself in a Spanish total immersion situation as an adult. I can get by fine but will never have the deep fluency that comes with learning a language as a child. I’m not talking about the bilingual education scam, BTW, but something else entirely.
They openly speak of conquest.
Reconquista de Aztlan.
It is very useful for managers to know what their entry level employees are saying. Also for others to know whether the streetcorner kiddos are saying, “Let’s move a little, we’re blocking his way” or “What a *$%&#, let’s take his toys”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.