Buchanan Hails Southland School’s English Plan

Taking a different tack in the nativist campaign theme he has sounded in recent days, Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan on Thursday praised one of the Santa Ana Unified School District’s bilingual education programs that teaches students English through “total immersion.”

Buchanan, who has been mathematically eliminated in the contest for the nomination, also took his “America first” message to elderly residents at Leisure World in Laguna Hills. There, he again called for stepped-up enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border and charged that illegal immigrants were responsible for much of the Los Angeles rioting.

On Thursday, although saying that most of the “institutions of assimilation” are overburdened, Buchanan pointed to the immersion program at Taft Elementary School as “one that is working.”

“It’s an institution of assimilation that brings these kids in and teaches them not only values, but the history and the background of the country of which they are now citizens,” the candidate said. “And if you can bring them into the language, you can open doors.”

School administrators said parents of non-English-speaking students at the school favor the immersion method over two other bilingual-education programs. In the program, non-English-speaking students are primarily taught in English with support from bilingual instructors. But they added that there are no conclusive studies showing that total immersion is more effective.

Buchanan, who has virtually conceded the nomination to Bush, has nonetheless pressed his campaign before the June 2 California primary in hopes of influencing the Republican Party agenda. He says he hopes to force Bush to halt illegal immigration.

At Taft Elementary, Buchanan shook hands with first-graders in a classroom that included a personally autographed and framed picture of President Bush. But the challenger also was greeted by a group of students holding a “Mr. Buchanan for President” sign.

In a fifth-grade class, when one student asked him about gangs, Buchanan said that gang members who commit crimes should be punished. But then, for a brief moment, the conservative commentator sounded almost liberal. If youths are simply joining gangs because they don’t have jobs, he said, it means leaders must “come up with some ideas to provide job opportunities so the gang members” can get employment.