Thread: OR: Ballot initiative to ban bilingual education!

Initiative seeks to ban bilingual classes
After a year or two of English immersion, kids would be mainstreamed

By steve law

The Portland Tribune, Sep 18, 2008 (38 Reader comments)
(news photo)

L.E. BASKOW / Portland Tribune

Atkinson Elementary School teacher Ruth Tucker works with her students during science class. Many immigrant children attend the school. Bill Sizemore’s ballot initiative seeks to end bilingual education in Oregon and put students into English immersion classes.

Oregon voters get to decide how to reach and teach children with limited English this fall as the hot-button immigration issue makes it to a statewide ballot.

Initiative promoter Bill Sizemore proposes scrapping bilingual education and English as a Second Language classes – now taught to one in 10 Portland Public Schools students. His Measure 58 would usher newcomers into English immersion classes for one to two years, then put them in regular classrooms alongside other students.

Measure 58 would push 3,500 Portland students out of ESL and bilingual programs and cost the school district $10.6 million a year in special state funding, said district spokesman Matt Shelby.

The campaign also should spark a heated debate about illegal immigration, boosting voter turnout by social conservatives in what is expected to be a close presidential election.

“Oregon schools have no obligation to people who immigrate into this country to perpetuate their culture,â€

[quote]Ludwick argues that 200 years of American history has shown immigrants can do fine being immersed in the language of their new country.

“How come Vietnamese can do it? How come Russians can do it?â€

As a multilingual munchkin, I learned English and two other languages from the people in my family. It was easy to figure out what language I should use with each of these people; when I looked at the person, it was intuitive. Kids absorb things like a sponge, and while they might speak Spanish at home, they need to speak English at school - period. English immersion is a good idea, but the lessons out there in society are free, like when you are tring to find a bathroom. In Germany in the 1970s, I asked for the bathroom (badezimmer), I got some very strange looks, as that means you need to have a place to take a bath immediately. You just have to ask for the toilet!

I learned German in 6 weeks...I was in Germany visiting cousins....sink or swim...I was 15....it can be done if they want to....I was speaking fluent German when I left after only 6 weeks..Not the PROPER German that is taught in schools...the street German that everybody spoke

[quote]“You’ll be hard-pressed to find anybody from my community that would say, ‘I don’t want my kid to learn English,’ â€

Originally Posted by grandmasmad

I learned German in 6 weeks...I was in Germany visiting cousins....sink or swim...I was 15....it can be done if they want to....I was speaking fluent German when I left after only 6 weeks..Not the PROPER German that is taught in schools...the street German that everybody spoke

Exactly! My friends kid was an exchange student in Germany. She learned a little before going over there and got good grades. She was just thrown in the classes. Math was the hardest she said. Illegals think they are "special."

[quote]Ludwick argues that 200 years of American history has shown immigrants can do fine being immersed in the language of their new country.

“How come Vietnamese can do it? How come Russians can do it?â€

It's always Hispanics who have issues with this, not other immigrants. This is proof positive again of a nefarious agenda which is simply to seek to change this country and eventually have Spanish as a second national language. These people have no desire to assimilate, they just want to take over. Hispanics are organized at every level of American life ready to pounce an any and every opportunity to further their ethnic demands. We need to DEMAND a moratorium on immigration from south of our border. No more immigration for central and south America for 20 years, period!

This makes me sick. Don`t I as a parent get to choose what language my children learn, or want to learn. Having a forced language, culture on my children is discrimination toward me as an European nationality. That`s what I want my children to learn, NOT SPANISH I want my children to learn their culture and languages of their nationality Not Hispanic! It`s never going to end. Multiculturalism doesn`t work in my mind. Muslims wanting prayer at work, Hispanics wanting us to learn their language and so on and so on and so on. Pretty soon all other immigrants are going to want us to learn their language,culture and on and on and on and on. Deversity doesn`t work. Why do we have The Hispanic part of town, The Chinese part of town, the Polish part of town, The Black part of town, and The White part of town. Thats what I see and hear. There might be alittle deversity, but I don`t see alot of it. They just don`t want to assimiulate period!