Bilingual Education

Re “Bilingual Teachers Say They Would Defy Prop. 227,” May 4.

By what distorted logic, from what anti-American allegiance, are so many public-school teachers defending the use in American classrooms of a foreign language in order to accommodate the wants of non-English-speaking arrivals from a foreign country?

Defying an overwhelming indication of the wants of English-speaking American parents (and even a majority of foreigners), members of the bilingual teaching fraternity indicate they will “stretch and struggle” to “do whatever they can” to thwart the public’s want to see American children attend classes conducted in the language of this country.

Do note the abysmal record of incoming freshmen in such minority-favored schools as the Cal State University system where, at the Northridge campus alone, nearly 50% of such must take remedial classes in English and / or mathematics.

Thank you, Gov. [Pete] Wilson, for your stand on bilingual education. Thank you, fellow Americans who want your children to learn in English-speaking classrooms, as were enjoyed by this writer before the Second World War, and by his children long before Southern California public schools became multilingual, mutlicultural, semifunctional and miniproductive.

Whose interests are served when such as the school districts of Moorpark, Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Ojai oppose the want for intensive English-language instruction in public schools? Which population are they obliged to serve--the Spanish-speaking opportunists who entered this country from a foreign land, or the Anglo-Americans whose predecessors did win the Mexican War of 1846 and gained California as part of the United States of America? The voters know. How is it the educators are confused?

T. BRUCE GRAHAM

Port Hueneme