Re: Mallard Fillmore 7/29

On Jul 29, 1:16 pm, INVALID_SEE_...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (J.D. Baldwin)
wrote:
In the previous article, Pat O'Neill <patdone...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A little? First of all, it's not from a major speech, like the two
it's compared to, it's from an answer to a question at a town-hall
style meeting.

And how does that make the quote "out of context"?

Because the context was an answer to a question, and the comparison
makes it seem to be part of a piece of soaring rhetoric.

Secondly, it's a typical right-wing slur job--"He's not a real
American, he thinks our kids should be learning some dolgarn
furriner's talk!"

Reframing it as a slur does make it sound like a slur, that's for
sure.

If it walks like a duck... (if you'll pardon the expression). You
think the right wing would be making a big deal of this if they
coudn't turn a one-sentence tangent into a wedge issue?


The context, of course, was about education and assimilation.

The context was a question about assimilation, and Obama refocused it
to say your kids should be learning Spanish. Tinsley paraphrased the
quote, but hardly unfairly.

Because Obama was making a point--in a global economy, being able to
speak only one language is a detriment...and it's a detriment for the
native-born Americans as much as it is for the immigrants.

The United States is just about the only western democracy (I'm not
sure about the UK) where a child is not expected to be at least
bi-lingual by the time he or she graduates the equivalent of the
eighth grade.

You forgot Mexico.

Mexico's a democracy? In name, sure...but usually the phrase I used is
meant to speak of Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand.

And of course, a nation that is already fortunate
enough to speak English doesn't *have* to worry so much about making
sure its population can at least get by in English. It's not nearly
so much of an economic imperative.

So, your answer is "let all the rest of the world learn OUR language"?
There's a reason Europeans think we're arrogant boors, you know, and
our insistence that everybody in Europe speak to us in OUR language is
part of it.

I wish there were better language
education in American public schools, too, just as I wish there were
better science and math and literature and history education. But if
I am asked a question about assimilation of our large-and-growing
immigrant population, I'm not going to answer it by talking about how
much I wish kids today knew who Horatio Gates was.

You know, the kids in those immigrant communities largely DO learn
English. I know--there are several different ones in my area (Latino,
Eastern European, Asian)--and all the kids know at least enough
English to "get by". As they get older, they become quite fluent. The
adults? Yeah, not so much...but how is that different from the
immigrant populations that your parents or grandparents (or mine) were
part of?



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Culturally biased exam question?
    ... ring is, surely? ... (I doubt the kids are concentrating exclusively on Maths ... therefore they should also be learning English, ... ring is or how it's been applied in this context. ...
    (rec.music.hip-hop)
  • Re: Lessons?..I think NOT!?!?
    ... "What are they teaching kids in college these days". ... In the past I've had teachers that readily admitted to me that they failed classes - and learned from that. ... supposed to "make a living wage" at McDonald's...you're supposed to move on and up from there once you gain the skills - get 'em, ... People visit Europe for it's history, ...
    (alt.guitar.beginner)
  • Re: That was Then
    ... None of us kids thought "danger-stranger". ... I remember when everything was labeled in English only. ... Bill Baka ... conversation with a 'bad' person as be afraid of him. ...
    (soc.senior.issues)
  • Re: the N word
    ... for others but whenever I hear 'cracker' or 'honky', regardless of the ... apparently regardless of the context in which ... So it's ok for kids to 'cuss' when not in the presence of adults? ...
    (rec.music.hip-hop)
  • Re: Foreigner(s)
    ... I am not a native speaker. ... *And you seem to imply that I am a beginner of English, ... Most English nouns can appear both with and without the definite ... article, depending on the context. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
Loading