Education

Reading Zandy’s post really made me think about the situation where I come from and certain things I have seen going on. I work for a summer program called Horizons, where inner city, underprivileged/ at-risk kids are brought in for a summer camp/ school program. Most of the students who attend are Hispanic and those who aren’t are mostly African American. The program is kindergarten through 8th grade and most of the students who begin the program in the kindergarten class do not speak English. I always find it interesting that we are told not to speak Spanish to the children unless absolutely necessary, as it is their job to learn English. While the majority of the students do end up learning at least Basic English, some truly are not able to grasp the language. It might be that the students have some sort of mental block when learning the new language, but the case is often that English is not spoken at the students’ homes and therefore they are not surrounded by the language on a regular basis and are not really able to practice. I do think it is important that the students are surrounded by English and taught the language while at school, but for some students, it seems like we end up compromising other areas of education in order to teach them something they truly are not grasping. I don’t really know how I feel about this issue, whether or not the students should be allowed to be taught in English or in Spanish, but it is something very pertinent. The ESL (English as a Second Language) program is something interesting to look at. I had an extensive debate with a friend about whether or not school should be allowed to be taught in a language besides English. We discussed the fact that while students may be able to learn subjects easier if they are in their natural language, they may never be able to learn English as easily as if they had started young. The school that our students from Horizons mostly come from teaches almost all of its classes in English with a couple ESL classrooms. We have a few students who have gone through many years of Horizons as well as normal elementary school classes but still do not comprehend English. The Hispanic population in Colorado is now by and large the greatest of all other minorities, with 19.9% of the population being Hispanic and the next largest minority population being 4.2% (from the 2007 U.S. Census Bureau). With such a large percent of the population being of Hispanic descent, and many, many households speaking only Spanish, you would think that Spanish language classrooms would be more predominant. A Colorado website called colorincolorado.org gives advice and support in both English and Spanish to families with ELL (English Language Learners) children. The website’s mission statement is as follows: “The National Institutes of Health estimates that one in five children has serious difficulties learning to read. These children are potentially among the most troubled kids in society. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 17 percent (or approximately 9 million children and youth) of the nation's K-12 public school population is Latino. By 2025, the nationwide school-age population will be 25 percent Latino, and states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York will have public school districts that are more than 50 percent Latino. These children are all not only learning to read, but also they are struggling to do it in their non-native language. With early identification and a lot of help, however, these children can flourish; without it they are at high risk for school failure. Colorín Colorado's mission is to find research-based and best-practice information about teaching reading to English language learners (ELLs) and use the power and reach of the Internet to make it widely available to parents, educators, and policymakers.” The statistics listed within this mission statement show the great rapidity with which the Hispanic population is growing and how children who are not native English speakers often do have a very hard time succeeding. After this long winded post about Hispanic/ Chicano students and what is being done for them, I go back to Zandy’s post about what was happening in the past and how children were treated then. As Zandy said, children were horribly criticized for their ethnicity. In terms of the children that I know today, it is necessary to keep them from those cruel critiques. Is the only way to do this, though, through English? If we are a country based around the melting pot theory, would it make sense for us to deny rights to those who do not speak English?