Project Is Good News in Any Language : Fullerton High School’s Newspaper Page in Spanish Promises Some Strong Benefits

The newly inaugurated publication of a full page of Spanish-language news and features in each issue of the Fullerton High School newspaper is a worthwhile attempt to help native speakers of both English and Spanish.

The school newspaper, Pleiades, is hardly a newcomer. It’s in its 74th year of publication and has racked up numerous awards. Last year, advanced students of Spanish published a newsletter that was distributed as an insert to the newspaper. This year journalism students wanted to make the newsletter more up-to-date, so they decided to include it in the paper.

The first bilingual issue included a translation of the lead article in the paper, dealing with a rally for Chicano studies classes staged by Fullerton College students last month. There were also notices about upcoming events and a story on the celebration of Mexico’s independence.

Bilingual education has raised concerns among some who fear that students may not ever make the transition to English. Studies have warned that those who fail to function at least partly in English get left behind economically. It’s also bad for this country to wind up a nation with separate cultures.

Those are legitimate concerns, and an argument can be made that having a page in Spanish does no favor to students who inevitably must learn to cope with English.

But including a page of Spanish in a student newspaper can help native Spanish speakers with the shift to English; it can help parents feel more connected with school; it can help non-Spanish speakers learn a new tongue. And all of that can help make the readers feel more closely connected to the paper and the school community.

Student newspapers in Anaheim and the Capistrano Unified School District occasionally have translated some articles from English into other languages, but school officials said Fullerton’s is the first regularly scheduled Spanish section. Nationally, only about two dozen of 2,400 student publications regularly include even a little foreign language, although some schools across the country have started offering Spanish sections similar to Fullerton’s.

The paper’s adviser, Barbara Clark, correctly emphasized not educational philosophy or politics but communication in making the case for the new section. Clark said it’s natural with a student body that is nearly half Latino to use Spanish to get messages across. Because of the large number of Latino students, the section could prove popular. It deserves to be.