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IN PLAIN ENGLISH, HISPANICS LOSE AGAIN
By Mike Levine
Times Herald-Record
January 14, 2007
Sunday, April 17, 1988 - This week, the Cochecton Town Board decided to make English the official language.

Why the Sullivan county rural outpost decided to take this action might seem puzzling. After all, only English is spoken there now.


''It was just an idea of mine, a prevention of what might come in the future,'' said board member Herman Heinle. He said that, with the passage of the English language edict, the town would not be required to print advertisements in another language.

That's funny; it isn't required to do so now.

Manuel Perez of PODER, a Hispanic advocacy group in Newburgh, doesn't think Heinle's words are hard to decode. ''People in Cochecton are saying in so many words, 'We don't want Hispanics,' '' he says.

Actually, the Cochecton decision appears straight out of the cultural paranoia of the USA English movement, a national organization that thinks our nation will be destroyed if voter registration forms are printed in Spanish.

But it's ironic that the greatest threat to the aspirations of Latinos isn't from small-town conservatives; rather, it's from a liberal educational establishment that purports to be their ally.

The culprit is bilingual education.

Bilingual education is the cornerstone of oppression against non-English speaking children.

It perpetuates a caste system in this country in which Spanish-speaking students are forced into low-wage, dead-end jobs. It fosters a cruel myth that a child doesn't have to learn English to get along in this country.

Bilingual education is different from the English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. ESL teaches English to kids new to America, while they attend English-speaking classes. That's fine.

Many new bilingual programs allow for children to be taught in two languages. Educators say this is ''an assimilation tool.''

Nice theory.

Over the past 10 years, the state has made hundreds of millions of dollars available for this type of bilingual education. New York City eats this up. It's popular outside the city as well. Where there's money, educational philosophy follows.

''The schools are happy to get the money,'' says Carole Hankin, the superintendent of Middletown schools and a critic of dual-language subject teaching.

What this has created is a system that allows Hispanic children to grow old in bilingual classes, unable to function in mainstream classes. Many never do become fluent in English. They don't hear it at home; they don't have to learn it in school.

The problem is that power in this country resides in the English language. If a child is not made to learn fluent, standard English, he can only go so far. he will not be a corporate leader or a U.S. senator. He will likely mop floors and clean toilets.

Still, the bilingual bureaucracy seeks to perpetuate itself. We now have nice-sounding puclic school programs to promote ethnic heritage to kids who can't even read a STOP sign. It's not the school's job to encourage or discourage ethnic heritage, whether it's Irish, Israeli or Puerto Rican. That's the job of family.

The school's task is to teach reading, writing and arithmetic so that all the anation's children have an opportunity to achieve their highest aspirations.

Some superintendents, like Hankin in Middletown, are rebelling against the current trends in bilingual education. They're changing the curriculum back to English as a Second Language. That's the language the student will learn in.

As borne out by the uproar over the Cochecton decision, language is always used as a tool of the powerful.

Those who would require English as a requirement to register are taking away a citizen's right to vote.

But those who don't insist Spanish-speaking kids speak English as fluently as everyone else is taking away something even more precious - a child's future.