El Condado de Fairfax

Where would you guess this school is located? Texas? California? Mexico?

Wrong. It is in Fairfax County just 10 miles from the White House.

Fairfax County Public Schools are generally a barometer of trendy "progressive" fads that spread throughout the nation, so watch out!

Two questions for Fairfax County Public Schools and, in particular, the principal of this particular school:

1) What kind of message does this send to Hispanic students trying to learn English?

2) Is it fair to privilege one ethnic group above others in the United States?

We have always been a multiracial melting pot with English as the unifying language. Students from all over the world from Asia to Africa, Europe to South America learn English as their first foreign language. They expect that English will be national language of America.

Except hare-brained liberals who have been indoctrinated in socialist multiculturalism. They feel that "career day" and "PTA meeting" are far too difficult for Hispanics to understand. Therefore, they must translate everything for them. At the same--a real plus for liberal education leaders like this principal of Bucknell--they feel they come across as elite, sensitive to foreign cultures, and oh so much more understanding than those Americans who wish for Hispanics to learn our national language and assilimilate for their own good and the good of our country.

There is a huge disconnect going on here: The elite liberals want to show their sensitivity for all the world to praise; Hispanic parents simply want their children to learn English and would rather their children be immersed in the English language, something that liberals are loathe to accept. After all, without bilingual education and multiculturalism, they cannot demonstrate how much they care and receive promotions and kudos from other elites.

Bilingual education is a dangerous multicultural trend that is both harmful to students and society.

Here are some suggestions for further research. Check out:

1) Linda Chavez's think tank Center for Equal Opportunity. They have excellent resources for combatting harmful bilingual education.

2) Matt Sanchez's editorial about bilingual education and his experiences with it, despite being born in the U.S.A.

3) Mexifornia, the terrific essay by Victor Davis Hanson.

4) Articles about bilingual education from Education Next, the terrific education magazine by the Hoover Foundation.

If liberals in Fairfax County Public Schools are going to go ahead and show their sensitivity by translating everything into Spanish for Hispanic parents, there would be one thing I would like to have them translate: a message by the Diocese of Arlington telling parents about their pledge to not turn any parent who wants their children to be educated in Catholic schools, no matter what the financial conditions or legal status of the parents.

One thing all Hispanic parents should do: Pull your kids out of "progressive" Fairfax County schools and place them into solid Catholic schools, where your kids will get an excellent American education, great universal Catholic values, and valuable character education, and they will be much more likely to achieve success and avoid joining gangs. They will learn Catholic ritual and not feel a need to get the ritual and values they lack in nihilistic Fairfax County schools from gang members.

Bilingual Education: Bad Idea

There is a corollary that never fails in education: If "social justice" professors want something to be done in American schools, then it is bad for American values and prosperity.

It is no different with bilingual education. Matt Sanchez has a great post up right now detailing his observations and negative experiences with bilingual education.

The term "bilingual education" is referred to by the education establishment as making Hispanic students learn certain subjects in their native language, instead of placing them in ESL classes or mainstream classrooms. It is not learning a foreign language in schools. The former is a cruel and horrendous experiment promoted by "social justice" professors that has never been shown in any scientifically-based studies to increase student achievement. The latter makes sense. Everyone should know foreign languages.

For the low down on bilingual education, it is best to start with the website of Linda Chavez, an expert and activist against bilingual education. If you have had a bad experience with bilingual education, e.g. arrogant, liberal educationists telling you that your child should be in bilingual education because he or she has a Latin surname, she would like to document your experience.

Linda Chavez states:

Bilingual programs are also wasted on children who do need help learning English. Studies often confirm what common sense would tell you: the less time you spend speaking a new language, the more slowly you'll learn it. Last year, bilingual and ESL programs in New York City were compared. Results: 92 percent of Korean, 87 percent of Russian, and 83 percent of Chinese children who started intensive ESL classes in kindergarten had made it into mainstream classes in three years or less. Of the Hispanic students in bilingual classes, only half made it to mainstream classes within three years. "How can anyone learn English in school when they speak Spanish 4 1/2 hours a day?" asks Gail Fiber, an elementary school teacher in Southern California. "In more than seven years' experience with bilingual education, I've never seen it done successfully."

"Social Justice" professors are very clever and authoritarian at the same time. They push for bilingual education that will force Hispanic children to be segregated from Americans of other races and ethnic groups in the hopes that they will not be assimilated, as every other ethnic group has been in America's history. At the same time, they fight Hispanics every step of the way by insisting that they should not have the right to be able to choose where their children can go to school. They hope that America will change from its e pluribus unum values, from a multiracial society to a multicultural society. The latter has never worked and there are no examples in history of successful multicultural societies lasting. America is and has been a multiracial society, not a multicultural one.

In any case, Hispanics should not be used as experimental subjects to bring about a bogus socialist utopia for "social justice" professors. Capitalism, freedom, integration have been proven to work; socialism never.

The vast majority of Hispanics, like everyone else, want their children to go to school and learn English.

Excellent article from Education Next on the disaster of the bilingual education experiment in California: "The Near End of Bilingual Education."

At CEOUSA: "The Case Against Bilingual Education."