One of the reality checks I give issues is to turn them around and see how it flies when it acts against the people who are supporting or banning or proposing or opposing something.
"When a kid wears a cross on a necklace to school, it might hurt a Muslim kid's feelings, so let's ban it."
"Flying flags on local buildings might hurt an immigrant's feelings, let's ban it."
"Speaking only English in American schools would make Mexican (or "Spanish-speaking") children feel like they don't belong, so we have to add their language too."
Okay, so we just ask ourselves what happens when a Muslim kid wears something to school and a Christian gets offended at it? We have polidies in place for that already. It's called, "Suck it up" or "Learn to stand it," and we make no special policies for the Christian kid, ever.
As for the flag--what do we say when an American kid moves to Belgium and sees a Belgian flag and gets offended? Actually, I think we spank the American kid for having the unmitigated balls to get offended over un Belgique flying his own flag in his own country. But that usually doesn't come up because Belgians and Nederlanders and les Francais aren't as proud of their countries as Americans are of theirs and you don't see 1/10 as many flags flying in Europe as you do in America.
What about the language thing? Well, what happens when an American kid goes to Ukraine and starts school there? They have English class, sure, but they sure don't try to turn their educational system upside down by teaching in English and Ukrainian both.
This latter issue is special and separate. I have discussed it here before. The bilingual ed program wasn't really bilingual and it did a terrible job of teaching a second language to anyone. As a reader of twelve different languages, I'm not at all opposed to teaching second and even sixth languages in school, but the program California had in place wasn't the way to do it.
But the principle applies.
No comments:
Post a Comment