Quote:
Originally Posted by clintjm
"Department of Education has told schools that teachers with "heavy" or "ungrammatical" accents are no longer allowed to teach English classes." "Teachers who don't meet the new fluency standards have the option of taking classes to improve their English."
Sounds good. We should only expect the best English education for our children. I mean the subject is ESL English being taught to non-fluent students. It is unfair to spoken English students when the teacher is unable to articulate the language properly or in grammatically correct ways. The article even has English mistakes: What is an ungrammatical accent?
Heavy accents to the point of not being understood and improper grammar is unacceptable.
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I agree. But do we really need a STATE LAW for this? This seems to be something that should be decided on a local level. If a local school district really thinks that a teacher with an accent is still the best person for the job, they should be able to decide that. Personally, I would take a dynamic, engaging teacher with an accent over a dull teacher with perfect English, any day.
It MAY be the case this this law is actually trying to bypass the teacher's union and allow local school districts to remove unqualified teachers easily. I don't know, but I don't really think that is the case.
Unless there is some background to this, having a state law to this just seems unnecessary and divisive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clintjm
"Under the ban, sent to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer by the state legislature Thursday, schools will lose state funding if they offer any courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
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"promote the overthrow of the U.S. government" -- that's one I think we can all get behind. But this is a red herring. Is there really an epidemic of Arizona public schools teaching kids to overthrown the government? I think not. This one is bull shit, pure and simple.
"promote resentment of a particular race or class of people" -- while this sounds good, even a moment's thought shows why this is a problem. There are, unfortunately, several episodes in USA history that are racist and we now feel is wrong. Starting with slavery, of course, but continuing to the Jim Crow / Black laws, the anti-Chinese laws in California, the anti-Jew laws, and the interment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. By this law, classes that teach these episodes in American history would now be illegal. Is this good? I think not. While unpleasant, we need to face our past, or we will repeat it. Which, unfortunately, we seem to be doing in Arizona right now.
"are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals" -- as clearly stated in the article, this is aimed to eliminate ethnic studies classes. Why is this beneficial? Personally, I'm not very interested in taking such classes, but many people are. So why ban them? A state law removing them just seems unnecessary and divisive, and shows that Arizona is turning racist or borderline-racist.