There are many fields in which foreign languages are a direct advantage, and some are more obvious than others. If you intend to major in a foreign language, taking that language intensively in high school is a smart decision, but even non-majors should consider the potential impact of foreign language skills in their intended path of study.
immigrants should attend language classes essay
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Ultimately, there is no easy equation to answer the question of how far you should pursue a foreign language in high school. The answer really relies on a number of individual factors that you will have to weigh when making the choice that is best for you.
The number of program choices you add to your application and the order in which you place them matter! Creating a balanced application can increase your chances of receiving an offer to a program you want to attend. A balanced application should have:
In a major victory for language-minority parents and communities, the Supreme Court struck down the states' restrictive legislation, ruling, in essence, that whereas state governments can legislate the language used for instruction in schools, states may not pass laws that attempt to prevent communities from offering private language classes outside of the regular school system.
Nevertheless, the legacy of these cases, despite agreement in the courts about the need for states to Americanize minorities and their right to control the language used for instruction in public schools, is that minority communities have a clear right to offer private language classes in which their children can learn and maintain their home languages. Thus, the common practice of language-minority communities today in offering heritage language programs after school and on weekends is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The Lau Remedies specified proper approaches, methods and procedures for (1) identifying and evaluating national-origin-minority students' English-language skills; (2) determining appropriate instructional treatments; (3) deciding when LEP students were ready for mainstream classes; and (4) determining the professional standards to be met by teachers of language-minority children. Under the Lau Remedies, elementary schools were generally required to provide LEP students special English-as-a-second-language instruction as well as academic subject-matter instruction through the students' strongest language until the student achieved proficiency in English sufficient to learn effectively in a monolingual English classroom. (pp. 4-5)
Bilingual education in New York received a further boost a few years later in Rios v. Reed (1978). The case was argued under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the EEOA. Puerto Rican parents brought suit claiming that many so-called bilingual education programs were not bilingual but based mainly on ESL. The federal court found the district's bilingual programs to be woefully inadequate, pointing to the lack of trained bilingual teachers and the absence of a clearly defined curriculum, clear entrance and exit criteria, and firm guidelines about how much instruction should be in the native language of the students. Although the court issued no specific remedies, the federal Office of Civil Rights came in to ensure that the district made improvements. This case is significant because it made a strong case for offering bilingual education and for doing it right.
To answer these questions, this new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine summarizes what we know about how immigrants and their descendants are integrating into American society in a range of areas such as education, occupations, health, and language.
From 1894 to 1915, the goals of Progressive reformers influenced education in the United States, since education was seen as a way to teach children the proper values needed to be a productive American citizen. It was thought that society's ills could in part be alleviated by education for all classes that would fit children for their proper role in society. Public education was also seen as a way to "Americanize" the vast number of immigrant children flooding into cities. Compulsory attendance laws were enacted to ensure that children from all classes received a basic, "common," education in elementary grades.
What does constitutional patriotism suggest for the sort of reception immigrants should receive? There has been a general shift in Western Europe and North America in the standards governing access to citizenship from cultural markers to values, and this is a development that constitutional patriots would applaud. In the United States those seeking to become citizens must demonstrate basic knowledge of U.S. government and history. A newly revised U.S. citizenship test was instituted in October 2008 with the hope that it will serve, in the words of the chief of the Office of Citizenship, Alfonso Aguilar, as "an instrument to promote civic learning and patriotism."9 The revised test attempts to move away from civics trivia to emphasize political ideas and concepts. (There is still a fair amount of trivia: "How many amendments does the Constitution have?" "What is the capital of your state?") The new test asks more open-ended questions about government powers and political concepts: "What does the judicial branch do?" "What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?" "What is freedom of religion?" "What is the 'rule of law'?"10
Constitutional patriots would endorse this focus on values and principles. In Habermas's view, legal principles are anchored in the "political culture," which he suggests is separable from "ethical-cultural" forms of life. Acknowledging that in many countries the "ethical-cultural" form of life of the majority is "fused" with the "political culture," he argues that the "level of the shared political culture must be uncoupled from the level of subcultures and their prepolitical identities."11 All that should be expected of immigrants is that they embrace the constitutional principles as interpreted by the political culture, not that they necessarily embrace the majority's ethical-cultural forms.
Why, then, if all national cultures have ethnic cores, should those outside this core embrace the national culture? Miller acknowledges that national cultures have typically been formed around the ethnic group that is dominant in a particular territory and therefore bear "the hallmarks of that group: language, religion, cultural identity." Muslim identity in contemporary Britain becomes politicized when British national identity is conceived as containing "an Anglo-Saxon bias which discriminates against Muslims (and other ethnic minorities)." But he maintains that his idea of nationality can be made "democratic in so far as it insists that everyone should take part in this debate [about what constitutes the national identity] on an equal footing, and sees the formal arenas of politics as the main (though not the only) place where the debate occurs."23
Cultural nationalist visions of solidarity would lend support to immigration and immigrant policies that give weight to linguistic and ethnic preferences and impose special requirements on individuals from groups deemed to be outside the nation's "core culture." One example is the practice in postwar Germany of giving priority in immigration and naturalization policy to ethnic Germans; they were the only foreign nationals who were accepted as permanent residents set on the path toward citizenship. They were treated not as immigrants but "resettlers" (Aussiedler) who acted on their constitutional right to return to their country of origin. In contrast, non-ethnically German guestworkers (Gastarbeiter) were designated as "aliens" (Auslander) under the 1965 German Alien Law and excluded from German citizenship.26 Another example is the Japanese naturalization policy that, until the late 1980s, required naturalized citizens to adopt a Japanese family name. The language requirement in contemporary naturalization policies in the West is the leading remaining example of a cultural nationalist integration policy; it reflects not only a concern with the economic and political integration of immigrants but also a nationalist concern with preserving a distinctive national culture.
Canada's approach to the integration of immigrants may be the closest thing there is to "deep diversity." Canadian naturalization policy is not so different from that of the United States: a short required residency period, relatively low application fees, a test of history and civics knowledge, and a language exam.31 Where the United States and Canada diverge is in their public commitment to diversity. Through its official multiculturalism policies, Canada expresses a commitment to the value of diversity among immigrant communities through funding for ethnic associations and supporting heritage language schools.32 Constitutional patriots and liberal nationalists say that immigrant integration should be a two-way process, that immigrants should shape the host society's dominant culture just as they are shaped by it. Multicultural accommodations actually provide the conditions under which immigrant integration might genuinely become a two-way process. Such policies send a strong message that immigrants are a welcome part of the political community and should play an active role in shaping its future evolution.
The United States is often described as a nation of immigrants. With the exception of Native Americans, the vast majority of Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants or enslaved people. This diversity has been celebrated for its contributions to American culture through cuisine, language, and the arts, among many other influences.
In response to the challenge of changing demographics more than a century ago, the San Francisco School Board established a segregated Chinese Primary School for Chinese children to attend, including those who were American-born. By the turn-of-the century after Japanese immigrants had settled in the wake of Chinese exclusion, the School Board also applied the Chinese segregation policy to Japanese students. School superintendent, Aaron Altmann, advised the city's principals: "Any child that may apply for enrollment or at present attends your school who may be designated under the head of 'Mongolian' must be excluded, and in furtherance of this please direct them to apply at the Chinese School for enrollment." 2ff7e9595c
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