Comments  2

• SANTIAGO JIM RODRIGUEZ 10/28/2011 12:00:00 AM

  Richard Rodriguez, sued Edgwood ISD in San Antonio, Texas in 1950 for the ISD to provide the resources to teach the students, mostly miltary personnel and Chicanos...He was fighting and arguing against  the similar negative, attitudes, emotional/illogical actions as cited by a member of our community in the article...
  
  Remember , as a VietNam veteran, there are over 34,000+ immigrants , non citizens that were brought to this country by their parents , educated by our school, and were given one option to gain citizenship-  join the military...They did and to some like many KIAS gave the ultinate sacrifice, their lives to protect and defend our beloved USA
  
  S JIM RODRIGUES, ELECTICIST

• Carrie Hereford 3/6/2012 12:00:00 AM

  We live in Texas.  Texas borders Mexico.  I have a hard time understanding why people get so mad about the fact that there are signs, forms and curriculum in Spanish.  I have to confess, I have felt frustration at times, but I can only attribute that to the fact that I was raised around people who constantly complained about it and unfortunately, when I get a form sent home that is in Spanish, my first reaction is to get irritated.  However, I try to check myself and use the more developed side of my brain that understands why this is necessary.  A lot of English-speaking people take for granted the fact that English is the lingua franca for most of the world.  I myself grew up in a German town where there is a very strong German culture.  No one was stirring any pots about that.  It was accepted.  As a state that borders another country, I would expect people to start coming around to understand that there is going to be some Spanish literature everywhere we go.  The Spanish-speaking students in our district DO deserve to have the same education as the English-speaking ones.  It isn't right to expect their educations to be put on hold so they can take a language course for a year in order to read the textbooks.  The kids don't chose to come here ... their parents do.
  
  Likewise, I would like to see Spanish being taught to our English-speaking children as I personally can't afford to send my girls to a class outside of school, but I think it's something that is every bit as important as math or science in the job market these days.  They have to wait until junior high/high school to start learning and it would be so much easier if they could start learning another language in elementary school.  Thankfully, my children's father lives in Europe, so they are exposed to French and Swiss-German during the summers, but this isn't enough to sustain them throughout the year.  When it comes time for them to transfer to Europe for their high school and university educations, they will be behind most of the other students as they don't speak anything but English.  Had they been learning Spanish here, they would at least have an understanding of the Latin-based languages which include Italian, French and Portuguese.