<p>camelia, I must be losing it. I didn’t even notice the lack of capitals! I thought WashDad’s post was funny.</p>
<p>But back to immigrants. My experience has been that kids under 10 or so will learn flawless English. Most high schoolers will learn English well, but can’t shed their accents.</p>
<p>I spent five years in Germany, and worked for a German architecture firm while I was there. I worked very very hard perfecting my German. My German was excellent, my accent decent, but sooner or later (mostly sooner) I’d give myself away. About the only thing I could do flawlessly was say “Planungs Buro HP! Gruss Gott!”</p>
<p>My parents were both immigrants and we spoke their native tongue and English at home. My Mom was more likely to speak English at home than my Dad. My mother was very judgmental when it came to immigrants who didn’t learn to speak English. In her view, anyone who came here and didn’t learn the language was setting himself/herself up for failure.</p>
<p>My experience has been that kids under 16 will not have noticeable accent. Adults can never speak without it, look at Arnold. I always had a question how Kissinger ended up having it? This is very unusual. Most immigrants continue speaking their language at home at least for many years, then it become mixture if they work and raise kids here. I completely agree that “anyone who came here and didn’t learn the language was setting himself/herself up for failure.” Absolutely personal responsibillity, nobody to blame, your own choice. No money will solve it, and pushing usage of Spanish will make the matter only much worse for spanish speaking.</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.”</p>
<p>Why not teach them in Spanish? Let us face the facts: There are hispanic immigrants. They are here to stay. The kids can not learn English at home. Schools do try to teach them English, but without the support structure at home they don’t learn and fall behind. Once they fall behind they lose interest in learning. Once they lose interest they can not be brought back.</p>
<p>Instead of trying to force fit English as a first language, make Spanish as a first language and English as a second language.</p>
<p>I see that in many elementary school. In one of my 3rd grade class their task was to write what they would be when they grow up. Some of the kids rattled off so much stuff to me in Spanish (being an Indian I do look like a Mexican), but when I say write in English, they can’t write even few sentences.</p>
<p>I laughed when I saw WashDad’s comment, although I don’t see the punctuation problem in camilia’s post. I was going to say something similar about sueinphilly’s post.</p>
<p>She states: “This costs the schools and society in general ALOT of extra money.”</p>
<p>I moved to the US from Mexico at age 11. My five siblings and I were required by our parents to speak Spanish at home (we did not like that rule at all!), and we had no problem learning English at school (costing the school no extra expense). I never learned the word “ALOT” though!</p>
<p>WashDad said:
“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 agree and have heard the same thing from a now retired teacher in South Texas.</p>
<p>At our school, there are many kids of Hispanic roots that are so integrated that for some of them only the name is the give away. Others don’t even have that. In time, I think that will occur with many of the Hispanic kids of the next generation, and they may no longer be URMs. This may also occur with African Americans as well, in time. My youngest son has two kids in his class that are at most half black with one white parent. My second youngest son graduated with two kids in his class with the same racial mix. My middle son had one classmate with that mix. This is in a predominently white school that has a number of “island” immigrant blacks(many diplomat kids) and only a handful of second, third generation American blacks. My close friend who is married to an African American has told me that when she first married, she was one of very few mixed race couples. Now there are many more though not as much in her hometown. Her kids are in a school that have a number of mixed race kids and have grown up without much thought about being black. They have befriended mainly white, asian, kids because that is in the majority there. Who knows what race their spouses will be and their kids will be difficult to classify. As it is, they are rarely spotted as black as they are light skinned and straight haired. More polynesian looking if anything. I think in time we shall truly become a melting pot. It is already happening.</p>
<p>“Instead of trying to force fit English as a first language, make Spanish as a first language and English as a second language”</p>
<ul>
<li>It will make situation much worse for spanish speaking kids, it will slow down process considerably. The best is to use English at school and stress using language of parents at home. It will create naturally bilingual population. However, I found that the second part (home) is extremely hard and sometime impossible to enforce.</li>
</ul>