English: The Official Language… in school?
February 18th, 2009 | View Comments
I came across an article while looking up states with English as an official language for my comment on a previous post.
This substitute teacher required students to sign a contract stating they would only use English in school, threatening to use the contract as a test grade, in order to get students to comply.
SERIOUSLY?
First off, as a fellow substitute teacher, what was this person thinking trying enact a school-wide policy change without consulting any of the administration?
For curiosity’s sake, I went to the school’s website. The school offers bilingual courses for many core subjects for students freshmen through seniors. Additionally, their World Languages department offers courses in American Sign Language, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.
I wonder how that substitute planned to enforce her absurd policy. Unfortunately, some students agree with her; or worse, they see nothing wrong with such a policy.
Peter posted this on February 18th, 2009 @ 10:36pm in Language Education | Permalink to "English: The Official Language… in school?"
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This is deserving of its own post, but I wonder how a hypothetical deaf student might have changed things in said classroom. I know a lot of hearing people consider ASL an adaptation or “translation” of English, but the consensus in the deaf community is that ASL is its own language. If there had been a deaf student, would he/she have insisted on his/her right to not use English in the classroom? Or would the teacher have insisted such a student leave and not be able to participate for the sake of language purity? Ugh.
At least we have some hope: Nashville voters recently rejected an English-only measure.