Learning English

* Frank Gaik’s letter (Sept. 24) concerning the desirability of more rational and effective English instruction in our schools and workplaces should be required reading for all those administrative bureaucrats responsible for the formulation and implementation of educational policies in the increasingly tarnished state of California.

As a Latino who has read Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, it has never ceased to amaze me the extent to which this country’s elite has let itself become intimidated by a small but vociferous clique of largely self-serving ethnic leaders who, having fatally confused morality with culture, have sold us an impractical, romanticized, folkloric and dangerously Balkanized vision of a Latino that has never existed but in their imagination. The reality is that there is nothing that Latinos want more than to learn this country’s language and be protected by its laws.

RAMON OCEGUERA

San Diego