Towering Babel
Southerners have been known to pronounce our fair state as "Massatuchetts." I learned that in the Army. Now, the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, has done the good ol' boys one better. LULAC recently sent out a press release attacking the antibilingual education forces who wish to abolish that curriculum in Massachusetts and replace it with English-immersion classes. Denis O'Leary signed the press release in his capacity as educational adviser for LULAC's "Far Western Region." Might O'Leary need English immersion? Here's the headline. "California's paid signature collectors speak in forked tongue in Massacuttes." Actually, a forked tongue might help to get around that innovative spelling. The name of the Bay State appears correctly in the body of the press release. O'Leary returned an e-mail to apologize and beg forgiveness. He has a sense of humor. "I proofed the press release several times," he wrote, "and like a pimple, the one that got away stands right up front row center." LULAC asserts that English immersion in California has failed. Ron Unz, the moneyed business guy who led the drive to whack bilingual education in California and who hopes to replicate that act in Massachusetts, contends immersion works. As with so many issues, the solution is flexibility - immersion for those who would benefit from it; bilingual for the others. Yes? Si? Oui? Ja? |