<p>"By 2050, the number of Americans of Hispanic origin will double to comprise a third of the American population. The Asian population is projected to nearly triple, to 9.2 percent of the population. And as those populations mingle, the number of people who identify themselves as being of two or more races will more than triple.</p>
<p>The result will be a United States in which the so-called white majority will, for the first time, be in the minority.</p>
<p>In the process, the children of new immigrants will not only reshape American racial and ethnic relations but define the character of American social, cultural, and political life, researchers at Harvard University and City University of New York write in Inheriting the City, a landmark study of the children of first-generation immigrants to the United States.</p>
<p>Research suggests that the children of immigrants face special challenges and opportunities that prepare them to succeed in American society. In the homes of immigrant parents, it is the children who cross cultural and linguistic barriers, breaking them down while absorbing the best of both worlds…"
[Children</a> of immigrants reshaping America - Nightly News with Brian Williams - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27106772/]Children”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27106772/)</p>
<p>^ Mr. Payne, I finally got to ask you: what kind of education do you have? Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I’ve been curious for quite awhile.</p>
<p>the main issue I have with hispanic immigrants is that the children don’t learn english at home and schools have to teach it to them. In my area, it appears that it takes at least 2-3 generations post immigrantion for english to be a primary language. This costs the schools and society in general ALOT of extra money.</p>
<p>this headline made me laugh; i’m a daughter of immigrants (and a first-generation immigrant myself) probably pursuing a career in public policy, so literally “reshaping america.” swedish, though, not hispanic.</p>
<p>Didn’t follow the link, but my Mexican grandparents – all four of them – learned English upon arrival in America, and their kids all are fluent in English, as is the next generation (that’s me). We needn’t generalize. :)</p>
<p>sueinphilly - really? that long? two or three generations?</p>
<p>We have lots of kids who interpret for their parents but their English is impeccible. We also have lots of adults who speak broken English and are difficult to understand.
Obviously, the sooner the kids get to America the better their English is.</p>
<p>Immigrant children graduate from high school bilingual and there are many bilingual jobs available. They have a definite advantage over those who just had two years of Spanish in high school.</p>
<p>We have a huge Hispanic/Lation population here and the Asian population is growing. The vast majority of these folks want to succeed in America. They are very insistant that their children become educated and also very dedicated to small business.
I don’t know much about the demographics of Philadelpia but many smaller cities in Eastern PA have a white minority population now.<br>
I keep telling my kids in a generation - those who are now new immigrants will be quite well off. They are buying real estate cheaply and starting and running successful businesses. In many areas they are living the American dream while right next door you have white blue collar families who are stuck in their blue collar jobs - who earned a good wage until their job was sent overseas. They are left bitter, complaining and relying on government unemployement, food stamps and welfare.</p>
<p>Sueinphilly - disagree with you.
Although not hispanic, I am also an immigrant and my kids don’t speak English at home. They had to learn it outside. Not a big deal
They have always been the best students in their schools.
Both H and I are professionals and we use English daily in our work. Never would it occur to me to speak English to my kids in the privacy of my home. They are richer for the experience
It is the intellectual background, not the fact that they are the children of the immigrants that matters.</p>
<p>i, too, speak my first language (swedish) with my parents, sister, and extended family. my second language is actually french. that notwithstanding, i’m aware that this will make me sound insufferably arrogant, but i think my command of english is in fact better than most native speakers’.</p>
<p>From personal experience, English does not need to be taught to kids. If they are going to regular school and NOT given any special instructions, they learn very quickly (in about 6 months they will be speaking without accent, reading and writing at the level that their grade requires). Special attention to their needs to learn English actually will slow the process. Adults learn second language differently and that is why adults are making mistake requesting all these special progams. “Just leave them kids alone” and they will do fine. Most immigrant kids are more advanced academically since school programs in their birth countries are higher level than corresponding american grade, so they will not fall behind academically, eventually some of them could be placed ahead after they learn English.</p>
You are probably right and it wouldn’t surprise me at all.</p>
<p>MiamiDap - I agree with you with young elementary kids. with high school kids, not so much.
I commonly see 7 year old interpreting in perfect English for their parents.
By the time a kid gets to be a teenager immersion is a little more difficult for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>15-20 years ago, Bi-lingual education was all the rage here. The thinking was we needed to teach the kids the subjects in their native language, usually Spanish, until they learned English. Problem was they never learned English.
A few years ago it was scrapped and the kids get support but they do not get taught in Spanish.</p>
<p>Our English speaking S attended a Spanish/Japanese (pick one) language immersion elementary school. When we were contemplating this option for him, since his diction in English was superb from the get go, we wondered about how an immersion program worked and when he’d get the focus on the English that he’d need. So we looked at the standardized test scores for this school. By grade five, the students in this school had English test scores that far exceeded those from the regular elementary schools in the district.</p>
<p>So we relaxed a bit and enrolled him in the program. We later found out (he did the Spanish immersion) what the fifth grade teachers did for English training, to prepare them for transition to middle school. It was pretty intense, more writing work than I saw him getting in 6th or 7th grade, unfortunately.</p>
<p>Fast forward to HS. He took AP Spanish Language as a sophomore and got a 5 like water off a duck’s back.</p>
<p>Immersion works. Not for all students, naturally, but for many of them, enough that I’m convinced it should be the default position, not bilingual training.</p>
<p>I’ve taught literacy to immigrants (mostly illegal) for more than 20 years. They aren’t learning English adequately and many are backsliding nowadays from the attempt (which is a relatively recent thing) because there are so many services offered. The thing that I note within the last five years or so is that many of the immigrants aren’t speakers of Spanish, either, but are instead Central American Indians. Teaching them to read and translating for them is very, very hard.</p>
<p>Zooser, a good friend of mine in Southern California has been teaching ESL to immigrants in the public schools for about 25 years. Her opinion is that the current system is generating students who are largely illiterate in two languages – their native tongue and English.</p>
<p>i assure you that i use accurate capitalization in all my coursework and formal communiqués. it’s a quirk of my personality (doubtless related to my history of low self-esteem) that i feel more comfortable eliminating capital letters in my informal writing, probably because it makes me look less serious as i don’t take myself terribly seriously. </p>
<p>i’m more dismayed to hear that my punctuation is off. where did i make a mistake? i don’t see it, but my inner grammarian and copy editor is always happy to learn more. :)</p>
<p>I don’t care how the kids learn English, as long as they learn it. It frustrates me when immigrants make no attempt to learn English (which I saw quite a bit of, growing up in Southern California), but stick stubbornly to their native language.</p>
<p>The fact is kids will learn no matter they want or not. Adults will learn ONLY if they want. You can pour $$$ into the matter and they will not make any diff.</p>
