Breaking the Language Barrier

My problem was common: I was broke, moving and needed someone to help load and unload a rental truck. So I drove to the Topanga post office and hired two Mexican day laborers for $60 apiece.

One of the Mexicans spoke no English. With our arms full of my junk, we passed one another on the driveway many times. We usually nodded or smiled. But we never spoke. Neither of us could speak the other’s language.

In a city in which this kind of sad economic ritual is all too familiar, I believe that’s a terrible shame.

I also firmly believe that we must continue to support bilingual education programs in California schools for one simple reason: to teach more people English. We owe this to the generation of Latinos now growing up in L.A.--most of whom are citizens and taxpayers.

At the same time, and with equal importance, we must also begin to give students who speak only English mandatory instruction in Spanish. Teach them while they’re young, when a language is easier to learn, and communication between the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking communities can only improve.

Why is this necessary? Because we’re a border town. Southern California’s heritage is largely Latino--just look at the names of California’s cities. A few bored, paranoid, flag-cloaked xenophobes can pass all the “English as the Official Language” laws they want, but that will not alter reality.

Here’s a dose of reality: There are an estimated 1.25 million students in California schools who speak little or no English. The purpose of bilingual education is to teach these students in their native tongue while also teaching them to speak English.

Is it expensive? Ungodly so. Does it always work? No method of education always works. Does it provide a service to the children of illegal immigrants? Of course it does--but it also provides a service to legal immigrants, and everyone else too.

Not surprisingly, bilingual education has become a favorite target of politicians eager to be “tough” on illegal immigration. Their thinking--and that’s a generous word choice--goes like this: We’ll abolish bilingual education and thus give illegal immigrants one less reason to come here.

Yeah, right. This thinking amounts to a scorched-earth policy that burns everyone. Tossing a kid who can’t understand “see Dick run” into an English-only classroom is not only wrong, but cruel.

Does it really matter if the kids are citizens or not? No. They’re kids. Babes. Innocents. We are not a country so poor or morally bankrupt that we have to pick on children. Illegal immigration should not and cannot be stopped in the classroom. It can be stopped only at the border.

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Equally troubling is many people’s apathy to the Spanish language. While Latinos in Los Angeles long ago realized that learning English was a matter of economic survival, relatively few Americans who speak only English would say the same about learning Spanish.

“We should be taking advantage of developing young people into bilinguals no matter their first language because the world is a different place,” says Victoria Zerches, principal of San Fernando’s Gridley Street Elementary school. “And bilingualism brings out a whole other awareness of the world and how other people live.”

Bingo. The world is changing. There will be, like it or not, more diversity in our cities, neighborhoods and workplaces. We can either cling to the past or do something truly progressive and require English-speaking kids to learn Spanish.

Surely, this is a plan that would throw most conservatives into an irreversible tizzy. Why should red-blooded, God-fearing Americans learn--gasp--a foreign language? After all, this is a country of immigrants and all those immigrants learned English.

Amid all the barriers that separate people, particularly in L.A., one that we don’t need is the language barrier. We have enough walls between us now; we don’t need another. It must be understood that the language barrier hurts those trapped on both sides, whether it means being unable to speak to a potential customer or being unable to talk to the guy lugging your couch.

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It’s Wednesday morning in the bilingual classrooms of Gridley Elementary, where approximately two-thirds of the students entering the school speak little or no English.

In Ms. Williams’ first-grade class, Latino students try to sing along to an English-language song titled “Good Morning.” In a second-grade classroom, a Latino student named Shirley reads to a visitor from “The Magic Fish,” a book written in English. Ms. Drogin’s fourth-grade class takes a geography test in English. In the auditorium, Mr. Martinez’s fifth-graders perform a play about the first Thanksgiving--in English.

Bilingual education is working at Gridley Elementary. The majority of Latino students are successfully “transitioning” into English-only classes. To many of the students, being bilingual seems perfectly natural.

“We have a thing called mixing, where my class mixes with a class of English speakers,” says Ellen Learned, a teacher at Gridley. “One day, we were playing jump rope. An English-speaking girl was at one end of the rope. A Spanish-speaking girl was at the other. They needed to count to get their timing right.”

The English-speaking girl, who had received no Spanish lessons, began counting “uno, dos, tres . . . “

The Spanish-speaking girl countered by counting “one, two, three . . . “

Funny how it’s the kids who often know what’s best.