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<p>I don’t agree the use of foreign language in public venues…including schools is rude or analogous to the Yeshiva HS student airline incident at all. </p>
<p>If anything, your argument could easily be used by that ignorant ne’er do well busybody who rudely cut into my Mandarin conversation with Chinese international students on a public street in a rural midwest town to tell me I must speak English because I’m in the US. Upon which, I informed him I was a US citizen, lectured him on my First Amendment rights to speak whatever damned language I please, no one appointed him the language/speech police, and anyways…the conversation WAS NONE OF HIS DAMNED BUSINESS. </p>
<p>I really tore into him for being so presumptuous to think he had the right to dictate the language I used for conversations with others on a public street. Now THAT’S rude. </p>
<p>Frankly, no one in a public venue has the right to dictate what language others use…including school unless it impedes academic instruction. It’s different if one’s doing so in more private venues such as professional meetings, parties, and family gatherings. </p>
<p>Also, …playing cards on school grounds is technically a violation of school regulations as stated in my Stuy student handbook and that of 8 years previous. Of course, most of us ignored it. However, back when I attended…none of us would risk drawing negative attention from admins/teachers who could use that rule as a way to hammer us if they felt the need.</p>
<p>The kids who felt they were being cheated would have been better off exercising discretion by refusing to play further, taking any card decks which were theirs, if any…and walking away.</p>