Why would a billionaire heiress spend millions to keep immigrant Colo children from learning English

Jewish World Review ^ | 10-04-02 | Linda Chavez

[SJackson]

Why would a billionaire heiress spend millions of dollars to keep immigrant children in Colorado from learning English? Pat Stryker, who ranks 234 on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, announced last week that she is giving $3 million to help defeat a Colorado ballot initiative that would replace bilingual programs with English immersion for the state's Spanish-speaking students. Surely Stryker isn't trying to guarantee cheap labor down the road by denying Latino youngsters the single most important skill they will need to succeed in America. No, her motives are far more benign -- but the effect is every bit as pernicious.

Stryker wants her daughter to learn Spanish. She thinks it would be nifty if her daughter became bilingual. Of course, the best way for her child to learn Spanish is to expose her to native Spanish speakers. If the child hears Spanish spoken for several hours each day and is able to practice speaking Spanish with her schoolmates, she stands a good chance of actually learning the language.

In other words, Stryker wants to immerse her child in Spanish because she knows that's the best way to learn a new language, so she's enrolled her daughter in a dual Spanish/English immersion program in a local public school. Now Stryker is afraid that the English immersion ballot initiative might deprive her daughter of her classmate-tutors. It just won't be the same without all those cute little brown classmates helping her daughter trill her R's properly or teaching her when to use "tu" instead of "usted."

But these are exactly the same reasons most immigrant parents want their children immersed in English. They know -- even without the benefit of Ms. Stryker's college education -- that children don't learn to speak a new language without being constantly exposed to it.

No doubt Stryker's daughter is learning enough Spanish in her three or four hours a day to get by when the family vacations on the beaches of the Costa del Sol or Acapulco. And think how handy it will be when she has to explain to the maid not to throw the cashmere sweater into the washing machine.

But the benefits to the Spanish speakers in the classroom are not nearly so clear. These children will have to learn English well enough to function in it permanently. They have to learn English well enough to study history in English, to take college entrance exams in English, to find jobs when they complete school. Wouldn't it be better to give them an entire day's instruction in English? And wouldn't they be better off being encouraged to speak English to their classmates all the time, so they could have maximum practice in pronouncing the language and learning its syntax and grammar?

Stryker's $3 million donation is the largest political contribution in Colorado history. The group receiving the money -- the misnamed "English Plus" campaign -- promises to use every penny in attack ads to defeat the English immersion initiative. If truth-in-advertising laws applied, English Plus, made up mostly of bilingual teachers and Anglo liberals, would be renamed Spanish First. Their aim is to keep Hispanic youngsters in Spanish-dominant classrooms for a minimum of six to eight years.

Continued.....

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[isthisnickcool]

My child goes to a non-public school. And is being taught Spanish. Just this morning my child (age 5) recited to me "The Pledge". Yea, the one of the United States, one nation under God, etc. But in Spanish. My little pserosn is getting pretty good at Spanish. I'll be hearing the pledge in French next.

If this woman gave me the 3 million dollars I'd be happy to build her a private school that she could send her child to. A school that would teach her child so well that her child would grow up and have enough sense not to fritter away 3 million dollars like her stupid mother did in 2002.

[camle]

so if I get the gist of her position, hispanic children are merely props to help her precious kid learn their language. Since they have no other purpose for this prima dona, they really ought to be on hand in case the little dear wants to hear them speak to each other.

like she really cares about them.

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[Phantom Lord]

Why would a billionaire heiress spend millions to keep immigrant Colo children from learning English

She and her friends need a continual supply of cheap housekeeping and landscaping help.

[Phantom Lord]

I'll be hearing the pledge in French next.

I am sorry to hear that. Will they next teach them to be surrender monkies?

[CurlyDave]

so if I get the gist of her position, hispanic children are merely props to help her precious kid learn their language.

This article is completely bogus, and the premis about hispanic children is equally wrong.

My wife is a professor at a major university and a nationally recognized expert in the field of dual language immersion. This is a completely separate educational strategy from "biligual education".

Just as one example, she consults at a charter school just north of San Francisco. The school has had a dual language program for several years.

If one follows the children through all the grades the results are that when they start in the first grade the english speaking kids are at about the 50th percentile in english and math, the hispanic kids are at the 6th percentile, and are mostly from farm worker families. Percentiles are averages for the entire group.

By the time they reach middle school the english speaking kids in this program are at the 95th percentile, and the spanish speakers are at the 75th percentile, when tested in english. Plus all of the kids are fluent in both languages.

Please explain to me how any program with these results is "exploiting" or "hurting" either hispanic or english speaking kids.

OTOH, it is a constant battle to keep the program going. In its infinite wisdom, the state of CA has decried that as soon as any given child becomes proficient in english, that child is removed from the "english language learners" database and put into the "english proficient" category. Then the state complains that the "english language learners" are not progressing fast enough. Of course if you keep removing the successes from the database and only including the slower learners any program will look bad.

[TxBec]

ping

[isthisnickcool]

I am sorry to hear that. Will they next teach them to be surrender monkies?

Sorry? Why? French is just one of several languages my child is either learning or being introduced to. The school is conservative and Christian. My child will not be surrendering to anyone.

And a monkey? Hardly! I take that as a snide comment. I hope you did mean it that way.

[On the Road to Serfdom]

My wife is a professor at a major university and a nationally recognized expert in the field of dual language immersion. This is a completely separate educational strategy from "biligual education".

Are you saying the article is not about "bilingual education" vs. english emersion? Are you saying Colorado does not have "bilingul education"? What are you saying? Why do you think the article is "completely bogus"?

[FITZ]

I have one of my kids in dual language and I learned to speak Spanish the immersion method ---not by being lazy and expecting it here but by going to Mexico to learn the language in real immersion. At first I was impressed by the dual language program concept but I'm having my doubts now ---the teachers keep insisting that Spanish is just as important as English which is only slightly better than the bilingual teachers who insist it is more important than English. Spanish is not as important as English ---no way ---but it's good to learn foreign languages. I may revert to believing it's better to be sent to Spain or Mexico for immersion in Spanish or France for immersion in French etc.

[FITZ]

If Spanish speakers are only at the 75th percentile and Hispanic kids who speak fluent English perform better then it doesn't seem to be an advantage to keep them speaking Spanish instead of English. Kids placed into all English classrooms pick up English very quickly ---but I think that's what some are afraid of. Job protection and all that for Spanish speaking teachers. My neighbors from Mexico put their 4 year old into an all English speaking day care ane by the end of October he was speaking English very well ---there seems no need in these programs in reality.

[narby]

Genuine "biligual" education (teaching english kids in spanish, and spanish kids in english) does help kids learn. It's like physical excersize for the brain, having to switch back and forth. (pardon my spelling this AM)

But as a general rule we don't have biligual education. We have mono-lingual education, teaching spanish kids in spanish, and english kids in english. The original selling point that got spanish into schools was that it would be truely "biligual" for everybody. There is now a bureaucracy in place, and those kinds of things are hard to tear down, thus the required blunderbuss of passing a law requiring english immersion.

Maybe your wife can spend her career re-defining the word "biligualisim" again to mean "two languages", not one.

[Poohbah]

"Bilingual education" is a fraud. A more correct term is "monolingual instruction in Spanish to maintain a supply of lower-class peons."

By the fourth grade, if the child cannot speak English, he's going to have a lifelong problem even if he DOES learn English, because he's going to have a very noticeable accent. Rightly or wrongly, he's going to be judged by that accent wherever he goes.

Truly "bilingual" education results in kids who can speak both English AND Spanish reasonably well, without any sort of accent that says "I'm an ignorant peon."

[Poohbah]

If Spanish speakers are only at the 75th percentile and Hispanic kids who speak fluent English perform better then it doesn't seem to be an advantage to keep them speaking Spanish instead of English.

Going from 6th percentile to 75th percentile is not shabby at all. That means that they have better English skills than 3/4ths of the overall population.

[FITZ]

I'd like to see the comparisons between kids from Mexico who learned English by immersion versus those who were kept in Spanish speaking classrooms ---even those called dual language. The way they do dual language with my son is the Mexican kids have a classroom, the American kids are in another classroom and they combine them two afternoons a week and switch teachers. The kids aren't really mingling much and the Mexican kids aren't learning English as fast as those who are in all English classrooms.

[FITZ]

I suspect Hispanic kids who speak fluent English don't lag behind other Americans at all. Even those born in Mexico or born here to Mexican parents who are taught English very early probably perform as well as Americans. I think keeping them segregated in a foreign language offers them no advantage at all.

[Constitution Day]

I am sorry to hear that. Will they next teach them to be surrender monkies?

Oui!

[buffyt]

I am living in LA area this year and MOST of the telemarketer phone calls here are in Spanish! I think the main language of the USA is not going to be English much longer. Maybe the kids are smart to learn Spanish how. But this is still so sad!