Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[marcos]

So what is the point to your first amendment there - to deny basic human rights to the indigenous of occupied provinces, looks like eh .... you gonna make the US version of english compulsory in Irak too? ... good luck, lol

And your second amendment is moot - under Ashcroft and this Patriot Act business there simply are no rights for anyone, there are only the 'privileges' they've not yet taken away

No person can be said to be educated while lacking fluency in an absolute minimum of two [2] languages .... the benefit to the individual of two or more tongues go well beyond the practicalities of their usage, into a general expansion of horizons, an increased capacity to comprehend .... and as national policy for the United States, mandatory unilingualism will not aid in its ambition to rule the planet over the long term, the combination will be seen as overweening arrogance, for obvious reason

English is fairly well established in the US, it is a rich and highly useful tongue, the lingua franca of business the world over, so it rather makes sense to use it, officially or otherwise .... in the one third of the US that are the occupied provinces of México, spanish predates english, it is the tongue of the indígena therein, it is rich in nuance and literature, highly useful, it is spoken by the majority of souls in these Américas, it rather makes sense to use it, officially or otherwise ..... the two together, though, add up to more than the sum of their parts - english is nordgermanische at its core, with some old french incorporated, and spanish is the closest living language to latín - between them you have represented the great majority of that which is european, and you've prepared a base to begin to understand the rest of the world

Agreed with points upthread on how 'self-esteem' has been distorted into the avoidance of education, not its acquisition ... if elected supreme dictator of schools i would from day one say you don't pass kindergarten or any other grade without appropriate levels of two fluencies minimum .... a bilingual exam? - definitely, that means you get asked a question in one language, and you compose your response in another .... multiple choice? - not in my school, lol, not after elementary grades certainly .... people [kids are people too, they're just shorter, is all] will have a lot more genuine self-esteem having learned something useful, rather than having learned how to duck the work of learning

[edit] - consider the advantages of breaking out of that little one-tongue box, look at this, others are doing so -

'... can take you to new heights ... can also accommodate a group session ... to speak more than one language ...'

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20030530/od_n...