There is so much said about making English the official language of the United States that more is said than being done.  I have only a few memories to draw upon to add to the confusion that is sweeping through the few who write and publish their opinions on the subject. So, here goes.

In my childhood household my parents spoke a pretty good non-accented English.  In my grandmother’s household all her children spoke English while she mangled it in a charming way. My mother and father, in trying to prevent me from understanding private messages, spoke Yiddish to each other.  As I have said before, I was too dumb to try to understand or make that language my own – much to my detriment.  I think that bi-lingual and bi-cultural people have a greater awareness of the world than those of us who are anchored in just one language and by implication, one culture.

But, the debate goes on mostly because immigration which used to be a constant trickle has become a flood and someone had the audacity to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish.  It doesn’t quite sound the same but to each his or her own.  I THINK that the Star Spangled Banner IS the official national anthem adopted many years ago.

Now about my brush with English as a Second Language; I was part of the pressure to not offend students and further depress them because they lacked English in standard U.S. classrooms.  Someone dreamed up the notion that these children should be started up in classrooms taught in their native language first and then go on to regular classrooms when they caught on.  The problem was that they spoke their native language at home, on the street and also in the classroom delaying their acquisition of English through instruction and hearing it, as it were, in situ.

My most irritating memory of the Spanish Language teachers who were hired in this Second Language business is that a real problem exists when you select a Cuban teacher to teach Puerto Rican children or vice-versa and the differences in dialect and uses of Spanish in South American countries are sometimes like speaking and hearing different languages.

Many children ended up in special education classrooms because they were not deemed bright enough for regular classrooms.  They did not speak English and were doomed to be treated differently. I have offered an explanation, not an answer.