White House Aide Juan Sepulveda Advises Latino Students To Learn English Good
28 September 2009, 5:04 PM. By Alex Alvarez
Stock photo of multi-cultural students!
Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, attended a meeting in Puerto Rico in order to learn how to apply their teaching methods to Latino students in the ‘States.
The main message Sepulveda had for reporters is that bilingualism was key for U.S. Latino students, and that it was imperative that young Latinos learn English in order to have better educational and career opportunities in this country.
Also on the agenda? Dealing with kids who might be too afraid to go to school because they’ll get shanked in the face:
He said that his job consists of increasing the number of Latinos who attend a university, thus contributing to the objective set out by President Barack Obama that 60 percent of young U.S. citizens get a college education.
He said that the border area with Mexico stands out among the zones in the United States experiencing the main educational problems affecting Latinos.
Sepulveda emphasized, for example, that in some areas of San Diego, California, Latino parents are afraid to let their kids to go to school because of the violence that occurs on the streets.
It’s a tough problem to solve, but not impossible. We look, for example, to our own mom, who grew up in a household with parents who could not speak English upon their arrival in the U.S. and who weren’t particularly interested in their children’s education or career goals. (Their response to our aunt announcing that she wanted to attend medical school was “We’ll get you a car if you don’t go and stay with us instead!”) So, the odds of her excelling in school were against her, despite the fact that she’s a smart cookie (or “Cuban cracker,” as the kids called her.)
Our mother remembers that learning English was tough and that her teachers and fellow classmates were far from helpful or understanding - which was probably to her benefit. The fact that forgetting the word for “chair” or “bathroom” resulted in a rap on the knuckles likely sped up the learning process. Not that we’re advocating abuse of womb nuggets. We’re just fairly convinced immersion works versus segregated classes for Spanish-speakers and that being expected to learn English quickly (when you’re young and better able to learn new languages) can be more of a help than a hindrance.
During high school, we were sent to visit a GED class aimed at recent Latino immigrants that was taught entirely in Spanish. At the time, we wondered how having this piece of paper - but no grasp of English - would help these students get a job that they otherwise could not have gotten. Would they have been better off learning English first? Would they learn it eventually on the job, or by watching TV in English? Would it matter if they never learned more than a few phrases if they lived in insular, Spanish-speaking communities?
We don’t have the answers, obviously, so we’ll open it up to all of you. Do you remember learning English if it wasn’t your first language? How and when did your parents or grandparents (or great-great-great grandparents) get around to learning the language? And, for those of us who have relatives who, despite years here, still don’t speak English, does it matter for them? We know you can get by just fine in Miami (or Brighton Beach or Flushing) without knowing a word of English. Except maybe “Where is the bathroom?”
White House Aide Stresses Importance of Latinos’ Learning English [Latin American Herald Tribune]
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My pre-k and kindergarten years were in Illinois and we were seperated into spanish/english classes…then they’d put you in an all english class if you knew english, which i somehow did but my parents didn’t speak english at home and the only way we figured i mustve have learned english was by watching sesame street/the wonder years. Someone that came to mind while reading this was Rosario Marin.
Spanish was my first language.. and its what we speak to my parents and most family members. I dont really remmeber the process, I learned English mostly thru my older siblings and then school, mind you I didn’t go to preschool and no Spanish immersion for me. My English & Spanish is about the same now.. you can sometimes hear a slight accent.
now my parents… they’ve been in the US for over 30 years now. during their us citizen process they took English classes. (I was about 6 or 7) My dad does know more English than my mom but they both know enough to make conversation and get by. If they hear a word they’ve never heard or dont know the meaning, they’ll write it down, how ever they hear it and they ask me or my siblings. for important issues though, they always have us translate everything.
I also have a couple cousins, legal & Illegal, that know very very little English.
I came to live in the US at age 12, an attended pretty segregated public schools that were filled with recent immigrants such as myself. Barring some sort of learning disability, everyone I grew up with here eventually became fluent in English rather quickly, as kids are wont to do, via what I interpreted as a mixture of in-school language instruction, television, magazines, and general immersion in an English-speaking country. The old canard that immigrants can’t or won’t learn English is such tired bullshit. It might be true for older people with little educational background for whom learning anything would be a challenge, but it certainly isn’t true for younger folk or for children and adolescents. As a fluent Spanish speaker who has been admonished to “speak English!” when speaking my native language in public, I can definitely attest that fluency in Spanish is often perceived as a lack of English fluency, as if you can only speak one language. I had this probably ridiculous theory at some point that since most Americans only speak one language, they have a hard time understanding the fact that people can be fully bilingual, and that it’s okay and not even that difficult. Whatever, maybe I’m rambling here. My parents immigrated in their 30s and 40s, and my brother got here at age 6. As you would expect, my brother learned English with native level fluency and no accent at lightning speed, whereas my parents took a longer route and have very a very strong accent. That just seems normal to me.
Anyway, I always take such common admonishments to “learn English!” with a grain of salt. I’m not sure if it is really reacting to a real unwillingness on the part of immigrants to become fluent in the language, or if those sentiments come from a place rooted in prejudice and xenophobia. Sure, there are people, like my 90 year old grandmother, who speak almost no English after many years of residence in the US. But I’d guess that most people who are not very fluent in English are either older folk, or very recent immigrants who have not yet had time to master the language. You’d have to live a very isolated life with no contact with the English speaking world to never learn English after many years.
I’d venture to say that Spanish GED programs are quite practical in that having a High School diploma in Spanish is better than having no diploma at all, and that it’s much easier to gain some basic conversational level in English than to convert an entire lifetime’s worth of learning into a completely new language. It’s not ideal, but it makes some sense. I don’t think the people who would qualify for such a program would be people intent on pursuing English Lit PhDs, you know? You can be too old or too behind to enter public school and get a degree the old fashioned way, those Spanish GED programs are more of a stop-gap measure than anything else. It has its purpose, I’m not sure if it’s entirely counterproductive or worthless. It’s not really that much different than obtaining a HS diploma in a foreign language in another country. It still measures that you have obtained a certain degree of education.
I think the problem of having elderly relatives who don’t speak English is quite different than having younger immigrants who have to navigate work and school with little to no English ability. An older relative is probably too old to work, and probably either does not live independently or lives in an immigrant enclave filled with people who speak his or her native language. Younger relatives would always assist the older relative in important matters anyway, let the viejitos watch Univision and thumb their noses at the crazy Americans, they don’t have that many years to go anyway.
I spoke only Spanish at home when I was younger. (I remember watching novelas like Rosa Salvaje and Simplemente Maria with my grandmother). I didn’t learn English until I got to Kindergarten. I was placed in ESL, but quickly taken out because the program was bad according to my parents. I wasn’t learning English. I also remember my cousin was placed into ESL just because he had a Latin last name (he didn’t speak a word of Spanish, his mom was American and only spoke to him in English). Not all ESL programs are bad but this one was. I guess it’s because there weren’t any Latinos in the area and the whole ESL program was brand new at the time.
My mom speaks English really well, but my dad doesn’t speak as well as my mom (maybe because my mom came to the US when she was 17 and has been here for over 40 yrs). My Spanish has deteriorated a lot in recent years, mainly because I don’t speak it as much (or watch novelas anymore). But people can still understand my Spanish.