English Skills Should Be Required for College

* The story on Cal State admissions of people who do not have English skills to enter college is outrageous (“Cal State Plan Would Severely Curb Admissions,” July 17). I see this problem every day in my plant. Some of my employees have graduated from state universities throughout the West and cannot hold a conversation in English with customers to assist in performing their business.

Immigrants may choose not to learn English, but they do not require their children to learn either. They keep their kids in their own closed communities and then complain that there are no opportunities, and want to go to college, billing all of us for their learning disadvantage.

Where did the policy of not requiring English skills come from, anyway? Are the entrance tests given in the home language? How do people pass tests without these same English skills to read the work and do the essay questions?

I agree fully with Ralph Pesqueira that junior colleges and the high schools are not doing enough to force the proper use of the English language at school, and more specifically at home and in their peer groups.

It is not a right to have an advanced education, but a privilege. My age group did not have an on-demand education, and all the previous arriving ethnic groups made it a point to learn English to be useful citizens. Study and learn and you succeed.

TIM JONES

Agoura