Newt Gingrich's advantage over McCain, Giuliani, and the hopeless Mitt Romney is that he's been pandering to the right-wing much longer. As a result, Gingrich doesn't have to pander to the right by changing his mind about issues like abortion, liberal dissent, the flat tax, and other conservative nostrums. He already agrees.
Instead, Newt has to figure out what is the tastiest red meat that he can throw to conservative audiences.
Tonight, he tried "bilingual education" in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women. Newt's argument was that bilingual education creates a "language ghetto" for immigrant children.
"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto . . ."
You can't say that Newt's not efficient in his bigotries. He managed to slam Hispanics by implying that Spanish was a language of poverty and blacks through the ghetto reference.
Newt is also wrong. The fact is that many immigrant children have to live bi-lingual lives between their native-speaking families and the dominant culture. Getting training in both their native language (mostly Spanish) and English is the best way to promote adjustment to the peculiarities of being an immigrant in the U. S. If immigrant children participated in language immersion programs and only learned English, they would have a harder time communicating with their parents and extended families. Given that strong family ties are extremely helpful in immigrant adjustment, American public education needs to help students learn their parents language as well as English.
Actually, it's native-born American children who should be learning more foreign languages. One of the problems that has been revealed by the Iraq War is the relative isolation of American society from the rest of the world and the harmful effects that isolation can have on American political and military initiatives. People like Gingrich want to make the U. S. even more insular, to turn the whole country into a version of Kentucky.
Instead of banning bilingual education, we should be using the bilingual needs of immigrant children as leverage to encourage native-born children to learn Spanish, Arabic, French, Swahili, Chinese, and other multinational language. It would be good for American politics, good for business, good for foreign policy, and good for the military.
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What a fool Newt has become (like he wasn't one already).
In e.g. California and Texas, they've been speaking Spanish there for longer than they've been speaking English-- the US got those regions in the Mexican War, after all. In fact, around there, Spanish *is* the native language of the cities, that's why they have names like San Antonio and San Jose.
Newt always likes to present himself as a historian, but he seems to forget that Spanish was given equal placement with English in the entire SWern region like California after the Mexican War-- offices, public schools, universities, anything with a public face has to have Spanish, and public officials and professionals have to know it. This is from treaties, not just public custom (which itself is also important).
Also goes for Flroida (little intro needed on Miami) and e.g. Puerto Rico, where Spanish is the dominant language even as the residents are US citizens. Despite Newt's fantasies to the contrary, Spanish is critical to the American fabric and as much a USA language as English is, and that's how it's gonna be, period.
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