The quotes in this post are from the article, “Parents say school misread son’s ethnicity” Wednesday, October 17th, 2007, by Esmeralda Bermudez, found at http://www.oregonlive.com/education/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1192591534232800.xml&coll=7 on October 21st, 2007.
This article showed me an interesting aspect of bilingual education that I have not yet thought about. The article is summarized well by the following quote:
For more than a year, a Latino boy who speaks only English sat in his classroom confused by what his Spanish-speaking classmates were saying and falling behind in his work.
His mother complained to school officials, but they insisted he belonged in the English as a Second Language program.
I don’t understand how the school could have possibly made this mistake. If a student speaks no Spanish at all and his parents claim that he speaks English, how could they place him in an ESL classroom. It is noted that the student has a learning disability and that educators “are not fully trained in distinguishing learning disabilities from limited English speaking skills,” but it seems to me that they should have been able to figure out that he didn’t speak any Spanish at all. This mistake put the child at a huge disadvantage. The same disadvantage that ESL classes are meant to avoid.
While Alek was in the ESL program, his grades plummeted, putting him at the bottom of his class, and he dreaded going to school, his parents said.
Alek was proficient in English and knew no Spanish, as is usually the case with American students, and yet, “solely because he was Latino,” he was placed in a Spanish speaking classroom. It seems to me that this, putting a student in a special education program based on his race, is a very racist move by the school. Alek’s parents even told the school that he spoke English.
The district’s bilingual report lists Alek’s primary language as Spanish, but Villaraldo said she indicated her son communicated in English
I can’t comprehend how the ESL teacher did not figure out that Alek could not understand Spanish. It seems to me that his proficiency in English communication and complete failure at Spanish communication would prove that. They should have been specifically on the lookout for this based on the parent’s claim that Alek spoke English. The article explains why this claim may have been ignored:
“Some parents will put ‘English’ if they don’t want the child to be stigmatized, even if the child would be entitled to ESL, and some schools don’t necessarily believe what parents say,” she said.
If there is suspicion that the parents aren’t being truthful, can’t the child be tested to find out if he speaks Spanish or English? Even if he has a learning disability that may be mistaken for poor English skills, can’t it be determined that these seemingly poor English skills are far more advanced than the nonexistent Spanish skills? I don’t see how a school could have made a mistake like this. It could have been easily avoided if officials were not putting so much stock in Alek’s race and concentrated more on his skills.
4 responses so far ↓
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Walter
// Dec 2, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Your post reminds me of a school district in Washington state that had a system of placing students in particular high schools based on ethnicity in order to sufficiently diversify classes. Ethnicity was not the sole determining factor of where students would ultimately go, but it played a major component in the district’s planning. If students refused to identify their ethnicity on school registration cards, they were hauled into administrative offices for officials to visually check them. To add insult to injury, the district officially categorized each student as either “white” or “nonwhite.” I believe the district had good intentions, and there were a lot of complex societal factors going on, including the so-called voluntary segregation of residential areas along ethnic lines, but it came as little surprise to me that the Supreme Court recently struck down the district’s methods. Alek’s case is similar to the Washington one in that certain officials and faculty might have accepted ethnicity as a blunt instrument with which to justify action taken within the system. Similarly, so-called representatives of their respective ethnic groups, who are so good at attracting news cameras and are inexplicably depicted as the face and voice of an entire vaguely defined group, seem to be guilty of the same thing. Race first, individuality second, seems to be the implied order of importance. Did faculty and administrators at Hillsboro act in a racist manner? I don’t think so. But race seems to be making a comeback as the be-all and end-all of identity. Why this might be happening is definitely something to be concerned about.
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Mike
// Dec 2, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Chris, this is definitely an interesting article. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they were being racist, necessarily, at least not maliciously so. That being said, Alek’s race or appearance of race, did play a large role in his classroom misplacement. This is the exact reason I think schools should be more personal. I mean, as soon as you enter the education system, you are given a number - at least in my district. That number now replaces your name. Anytime you had to fill anything out, it was student number first, name second. I mean, that same system is used at Grand Valley. No one cares about your name, just your number. If schools (the people, not the actual building) were more personal and actually sat down with students as they entered they might actually learn a thing or two - like which ones speak English. Oh, if only we were so lucky. The fact that the school simply didn’t believe Alek’s parents when they said he spoke English sends chills down my spine. I just can’t believe they would be so ignorant to do something like that. Well, I can believe it, I just don’t want to. Anyways, great article!
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