English and Speakers of Spanish

Re “UC Language Study Looks to Schools in Oxnard,” Dec. 30.

How very confidence-inspiring it is to know that the University of California has a Linguistic Minority Research Institute to study what helps and hurts Spanish-speaking students in their effort to learn English and to conduct its research in 36 schools throughout the state, working with 120 teachers and 2,800 students.

How very uninspiring it is to read that such study will be headed by Russell Rumberger, director of the institute, who so learnedly states: “We need long-term studies of these kids. It seems like Spanish-speaking kids have traditionally had more problems learning English than other kids.”

Could it be that Spanish-speaking kids often continue using the Spanish language in their own homes? Could it be that we encourage the expansion of Spanish-language media agencies, that we print ballots in Spanish and that wage-minimizing employers permit the use of Spanish in their places of immigrant employment?

More distressing than the immigrants’ use of their native language is the evidence of language used by the director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute who, when explaining the institute’s mission and referring to the young students, uses the term “kids” three times in a two-sentence statement.

This writer, while treated to a two-week ride in a covered wagon with a sheep-herder following a flock of sheep in Idaho, was carefully informed that a “kid” was a small goat! To be honest, the sheep-herder was not a graduate or faculty representative of the University of California.

It is hoped that the director of the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute can find an expression other than “kid” by which to refer to his research subjects.

Rather than to “set aside $9 million for each of five consecutive years to fund nationwide studies on how Spanish-speaking children learn to read and write English,” ’twould seem to this writer that a better use of the funds would be to limit the numbers of foreign-speaking intruders so in need of special instruction in our country’s language.

T. BRUCE GRAHAM

Port Hueneme