National Education Association

This article was in the NEA's homepage. The NEA is the all-powerful teacher's union. I think this article is worth reading given the current debate about English as a Second Language.
The link to the article is
http://www.nea.org/neatodayextra/huerta.html


Respect, Spanish, and Unemployment Insurance
Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. At 76, she’s still fighting for social justice, running a foundation that recruits and trains community organizers.


Former teacher and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta spoke with NEA Today about educating the children of Latino farm workers.
Huerta taught elementary school in Stockton, California in the 1950s. Her daughter teaches third grade in Los Angeles.

Huerta talked recently with NEA Today’s Alain Jehlen.

NEA Today:
What do educators need to understand to help farm workers’ children learn?

Huerta:
They need to understand that these children are very intelligent even though they don’t speak English. If you don’t speak Spanish, you need to get an assistant who does.

It’s very difficult now for Latino children who don’t speak English in California and other states that have eliminated bilingual education. The children will learn English eventually, but if they are made to feel guilty for speaking Spanish, that leaves a terrible mark that’s very hard to get over.

NEA Today:
How can we help them gain confidence and learn?

Huerta:
They shouldn’t be made to feel inferior. They should be proud of their parents. Farm workers do the most important work in the world: they feed the nation. I often ask people, if you had to be on a deserted island—like on Survivor—who would you take with you, a farm worker or a lawyer?

And the second person I would take would be a teacher.


Huerta explains to NEA Today writer Alain Jehlen how important education is to farm workers' children.
NEA Today:
When students move so often, how can a teacher connect?

Huerta:
In states like California where farm workers can get unemployment insurance, the family can stay after the harvest is over and the children can go to school.

Education is so important. You know, Cesar Chavez only went as far as the eighth grade, but he always had a book under his arm. He was always learning and always promoting education.

A farm worker’s daughter told me that when she was a girl, her father went to a Farm Workers rally and heard Cesar say, "Your children need to go to school. They don’t belong in the fields, take them out." The next day, her father sent all his children to school. Today, that daughter is a community college president.

Related Links:

For teaching materials on the United Farm Workers organizing drives among migrant workers, visit http://cesarechavezfoundation.org/.

Funny, but I don't recall having ever heard of Vietnamese, Japanese, German, Russian, Polish, or other immigrants being made to fell "guilty" for not speaking English. They just came over and learned the language and became Americans.

Why do damned illegal Mexicans feel guilty for not speaking English? Could it be that there is a deeper underlying cause for their guilt, such as the fact that they have no intention of becoming Americans, but rather are banditos robbing us blind while plotting to steal our land for Mother Mexico? They damned well SHOULD feel guilty!

I'm a teacher and I can't stand the NEA. They always back people that I don't want to vote for. As for how intelligent these children are, I hate to say this, but as a teacher who is bilingual (English/Spanish) and teaches Structured English Immersion (SEI), most kids don't score well when they take the language exam in their native language (Spanish). I've been teaching for 11 years and I have given the Woodcock-Munoz exam in English and Spanish. I teach Kindergarten and they give me the scores of everyone in English and Spanish. In my 11 years of teaching, I have never had a student score 5 overall (5 being fluent, 1 being not at all fluent) in Spanish--EVER. Their command of the Spanish language as a whole is not that great. The parents' language skills are awful in Spanish. They aren't very educated. It's cultural too. I watch them with their kids. They don't interact with them the same way that the American moms and dads do. They don't talk to their babies, like Americans do who oooh and aahh over them. They just push the stroller along and yank the 4 other kids with them. I'm not saying that all Mexicans are that way, but there are so many like this. Many times, the students score 3 or below (this is almost 100 percent of them) as their total language score in Spanish which translates to "limited or very limited Spanish" on the test result paper. Sad.

Oh! and I forgot to mention that the "migrant" kids that I had in my class were always the lowest kids in class.

President Bush told a group of Illegals that they needed to learn English if they planned to stay in the United States.

The llegals said Ok President Bush - You First.







Joke told by Jay Leno the other night.

I agree with Proud US Citizen.

I too am a teacher but at the moment I do not teach any migrants, legal or otherwise. Still, it is clear to me that ultra-liberal types in the k-12 educational field continually kowtow at the altar of political correctness and enable many illegals to abuse the benefits that the American system offers.

Steve Hill
editor

As the parent of a special needs child who was treated like a "problem" by his teachers, and who most certainly WAS made to feel inferior by teachers I can't tell you how angry this treatise by the NEA makes me feel. They have so much compassion for illegal aliens who have no desire to assimilate, who speak only Spanish to their children in their homes, who you KNOW are not emphasizing the importance to their children of learning English...but special needs AMERICAN children are "problems" (and if they are boys, they are doubly so, and are usually recommended for mind numbing prescription drugs so the teacher doesn't have to deal with them).

And by the way....I thought being a MOTHER was the toughest job in the world....or was that just lip service? Now it's being a farmer? I ran a farm for 13 years and that was a cakewalk compared to being a parent!

Quote:

---

Funny, but I don't recall having ever heard of Vietnamese, Japanese, German, Russian, Polish, or other immigrants being made to fell "guilty" for not speaking English. They just came over and learned the language and became Americans.

---

Absolutly and you never heard word one from them and look how well many are doing! I personally don't know any Vietnamese or Japanese but I do Chinese, Russian, Polish etc. The attitude was so different. They were excited and honored and WANTED to learn and felt it was their responsibility to do so. So I don't have much sympathy for this unwilling group.

While in California schools in the 60s and 70s the migrant's kids came and went.

I don't recall anybody ever teasing them, putting them down. Heck, if they were good at dodgeball or kickball they were selected as quickly as anyone.. and that's all we really cared about.

Once junior high came around, though, the gang stuff began.

Amongst the male migrants (and many were likely illegal but this was before the immense numbers of invaders began and I can't recall any problems as we face nowadays) from junior high to high school I noted a common attitude that education was for women, real men go work, males who attempt to educate themselves were contemptable, looked down upon, to be beaten for fun and to put the putas in their place.

I also heard the migrant kids brag about when they served time in "juvie," juvenile hall. It was a badge of honor for many of the migrants.

Simply put, the migrant males made life pretty miserable for us Anglo males. Especially the ones who stood up to them, refusing to back down.

My standing up to the thuggery led to being shown the "honor" bestowed upon one of the few Gringo males who meeted and beated almost all who confronted me...... the attending of the Brown Beret cell meeting in 1971.

Oh, by the way..... boasting? No, just fact to show what the time and place was like.

Each of the three junior highs in town had its own Hispanic gang. After I whipped every single gang dummy at my junior high they sent one from one of the other schools. I pummeled the idiot.

Luckily, those were the days referred to today as the "old gangsta" era when fists and feet were the rule, not the gunplay of today. There was a certain "code of honor" that disappeared in the late 1970s.... hmmmmm..... about the time of the HUGE influx of illegals, I believe. May be a correlation.

Anyway.... the word went around school. The supposed toughest, meanest, best fighter of ALL the Hispanic gangs was going to track me down and wipe the street with me. Sheeeesh.... what great fun as the punks and idiots relayed the news to me, declaring their desire I be whomped on. Remember, most of the Anglos appeased the migrants, the Hispanics. Very few Anglos had the guts to support me but we did not band together as the Hispanics did.... I was on my own.

A couple weeks passed with nothing happening. I figgered' it was just talk meant to scare me. But..... drum roll, please. While walking home from school I turned the corner and there was the crowd of kids, with one fairly-large Hispanic standing in front.

Sigh......... I coulda' turned around, took another route home but.... I was a stubborn kid. Besides, I was a good street fighter, even at the tender age of 13. An hour nightly with the punching bag didn't hurt anything!!!

To make this shorter..... I won. Whipped him good. I pummeled him and left him dazed and bleeding on the ground. By the way, when we fought back in those days it wasn't a few punches, a bloody nose then all was over. We fought tough and rough and you hurt for days afterwards.

You'd think that would have ended it. Nope. The Hispanics are clannish and there were dozens more to tangle with. When the high school kids came gunning for the junior high kid... me, I knew I'd have to increase my training time. By the time I entered high school those fights were getting to be serious business.... but that's enough for now.

Remember, celebrate diversity!!!!!!! Embrace multi-culturalism!!! If you don't, the gang bangers may beat the love of their culture into you.

Viva La Raza!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!