In the ghetto

It's pretty obvious that Gingrich was referring to linguistic isolation. Even so, the Spanish being spoken in this country is hardly that of Cervantes or Garcia Marquez. No more so than "ebonics" is the language of Shakespeare and Dickens.

Gingrich is fairly articulate for a white guy, but everyone has their bad days in terms of communication: people shouldn't be so niggardly in giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyone who likes to hear himself talk as much as Newt is bound to say something infelictously from time to time. Of course, he was right.

Because a child being raised by middle-class (or higher), well-educated people who speak fluent English is an object lesson for all immigrant children I gotta agree with this, Rod. Unless and until someone is willing to admit that immigrants are not a unified socio-economic bloc and that some suffer from vast inequities in this country (as do so very many born citizens) then this dialogue is only covering half the story.

Eliticism : The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority. See: The ego of "Catholic" radio host drew mariani for an example of eliticism masked as piety, with a particular style of hollow spit on the shoes to polish faux blue collar-esque tone to match.

Eliticism. Heh. Perhaps we've witnessed the birth of "The Son of Truthiness!"

"ghetto" as a term that means "a community that is culturally isolated from the dominant culture" is, by the way, completely accurate. In Korea, for example, American military bases could accurately be called "American ghettoes." Within the larger, dominant Korean culture these bases have a culturally and linguistically homogenous American community. Doesn't mean that the language of Shakespeare is inferior to the language of Sejong. In Warsaw back in the day the part of town where all the Jews lived was the "ghetto," because it was homogenously Jewish within the larger Polish culture. Doesn't mean that the language of Moses is inferior to the language of Pope John Paul. I disagree with Gingrich's politics quite strongly, but I don't find his use of the word "ghetto" to be at all inappropriate. In places like Los Angeles there are indeed cultural ghettoes, where a given neighborhood is almost entirely composed of a single minority culture and speaks a single minority language. People in these ghettoes are indeed disadvantaged because they are often neither culturally nor linguistically fluent in the dominant American culture. Living in a cultural ghetto-- no matter what culture or language-- *is* a disadvantage, not because the minority culture or language is somehow bad or inferior, but because members of the ghetto community are cut off from participation in the culture at large. So Gingrich is claiming that bilingual education keeps immigrant children down by isolating them within their cultural and linguistic ghetto and withholding from them the tools necessary to live full and successful lives outside of that ghetto. Monolingual English education, on the other hand (he claims), gives kids the opportunities and skills they need to succeed outside of their parents' ghetto, in the dominant Anglophone culture. I disagree with his claims about bilingualism, but his use of the word "ghetto" is quite accurate.

Gingrich is right, no matter how it sounds. I teach in the inner city. There was a recent protest of tardy sweeps, and we heard that, "Tardy sweeps are a form of white oppression." The anti-assimilation retards stay up all night thinking this stuff up. Immersion is better. The bilingual programs DID isolate the kids. The Hispanic population has a huge tendency to remain isolated and then claim "racism" for the lack of success...when it's the white bashing that CAUSES the lack of success. The kids are taught that Che was a hero, that white society is suspect, so that punctuality, industry, thrift, honesty, (and the rest of the Protestant Ethic) is "white" and to be avoided. So what does that leave kids of color? Sadly, not much.

Lilian, What you say makes so much sense- it is racism and condescending to believe a people are so weak and incapable they can't make it. I'm Black and in the 60's that what did blacks in in this country.The idea that we were incapable of doing what our parents in segregation, in the south of all places, were able to do.Plus, the can't do attitude translates to contempt and disrespect by other races and immigrants. Brazil suffered suffer linguistic isolation until the government mandated Portuguese only and now it is the spoken by all Brazilians ( I'm not referring to Amazonian Indians; that's a whole different issue). Before that every ethnic group that settle there lived in ethnic enclaves and their children were taught within that enclave in their native tongue.Few people spoke Portuguese and in the 1930's the President realized the country would never be united without a common language.
When English only is mentioned here it's decried as racist, blah,blah,blah, but apparently we're not the first to consider the benefits of such a policy. Bilingual countries are a mess-Canada, Belgium and split citizenry along linguistic boundaries. We don't need that. The racial issues are enough.

anon, Admittedly, I'm in favor of bilingualism (at minimum-- if everyone were trilingual that'd be even better; and there *are* parts of the world where even illiterates are commonly polyglots). Tens of thousands of English monolinguals are trying really hard to learn Spanish... now here we have children with the advantage of already speaking child-level Spanish, and we want to make them English monolinguals?
Yes, they need to learn English. But "Spanish in the classroom needs to stop"? Why do we want to turn bilinguals into monolinguals? I just don't get it.