The Question of Bilingual Classes

The column about bilingual education (Aug. 23) by an Anaheim principal is so full of misconceptions that it horrifies me. In the first place, when she speaks of “bilingual education” she is not talking about Koreans, Vietnamese, Iranians--all the non-English people who come to California. She is speaking of Spanish-speaking students.

My daughter teaches in Santa Monica, in a mixed-race school. Every teacher in her school, including her best friend, a Mexican, is strongly against bilingual classes. One of my daughter’s pupils, a “boat person” from Vietnam here only four years, learned English so well that she won the citywide essay contest. So did her older brother in the junior high division. She was not handicapped by being put into a bilingual Vietnamese-English class.

In only one year a Latino child can learn English well enough to do as well as those who are born into an English-speaking family. One very bad habit is speaking only Spanish at home, and watching Spanish TV stations. The parents who care will take the effort to learn English.

If Mexican children are made to speak English at school even in the playground they will learn it, I assure you. We refuse to become a bilingual country like Canada. If Latinos don’t want to learn English, there are Central and South American countries they can immigrate to. MRS. JEAN R. BERRY

Laguna Hills