Chapter 7 showed the many problems that existed in the common school system due to racism. I’m going to specifically target the issues regarding the Mexican-Americans and the issues they came across regarding the spanish language having no place in the common school curriculum in Texas. My issue doesn’t regard the school making English the official language, or even teaching English as a subject, but rather how many Texans discriminated against the Mexican-Americans because of their background of where they live and the language they speak. Rather than implementing a system like ESL, where students where their first language wasn’t English can be assisted differently, they decided to just make English the official language and practically told those who didn’t know it “too bad”. I find the idea of making the English language in these schools the “official language” a bit unnecessary, and it just seems to support the idea of prejudice being the reasoning behind their decision-making.
With that being said, I do feel that the children should’ve been taught English early in their academic life, and then taught in English later in their careers. I don’t know if people in earlier posts were saying that students living in the United States should be taught in whatever their native language is, but I feel that not teaching them English and not teaching them in English will ultimately hurt them. While their is no official language in the United States, I do believe that not knowing English is more harmful to a student than helpful. The majority of people in the United States did, and do speak English. I don’t mean this as “Majority Rules” but rather as “You can speak your native language, but most of the country wont.” If a native Spanish speaker wanted to move up the social ladder in the United States, I find them having an extremely difficult time doing so if they were unable to speak English. This is because everyone I’ve ever heard speak that holds a high position in government, a large business/corporation, hospitals, etc. in the United States does in fact speak English. Again, I’m not saying to strip people of their Native Language or teaching them history about their native countries, but I do feel that not teaching them in English will hurt more than harm.
