Bilingualism and Obama

Obama was saying,

You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, "We need to have English - only." They want to pass a law, "We want English-only."

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], "Merci beaucoup." Right?

You know, no, I'm serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5, or 6, or 7 than when they're 46, like me.

Obama does pronounce Spanish very clearly when he does his political ads. He also does it for a political purpose. His thought that Americans should make their children bilingual in Spanish panders to "Hispanics" who are not interested in assimilating, but makes no sense vis-a-vis the argument that doing so would keep Americans from embarrassment when traveling in Europe: only a small number of Europeans speak Castillian (including, increasingly, non-Castillians born and raised in Spain). May I remind Obama that what we call Spanish in the USA is Castillian in Spain?

Andrew Leonard thinks that

There's nothing particularly exceptional about Obama's position, unless you are an English-only partisan cowering in fear of your cultural identity being swamped by funny-looking people from strange lands. Or one of the similarly insecure patriots who believe any criticism of the U.S. is a sign of "blame-America-first" treachery. And I suppose the whole comment about "going to Europe" opens Obama up to more charges of elitism, and disconnection from the lives of those who, right now, can't afford to even think about going to Europe.

Leonard clearly ignored people like myself, who are fully bilingual in Spanish, and who also can read French and a little Portuguese. Some of us are "Hispanic" (which, as I've said before is a term I use for expediency), many of us are not. I have met thousands of Americans born and raised in the USA who are multilingual.

People like myself are not "cowering in fear of your cultural identity being swamped by funny-looking people from strange lands." For starters, even when we come from "strange lands", we are not "funny-looking people". Indeed, people like me are fully integrated Americans and look like everyone else, i.e., unfunny.

What we fear is not that our "cultural identity" may or may not be "swamped", because we are secure in our cultural identity; What we worry about is that new immigrants (documented or not) who hadn't had a quality education in their countries of origin would deny themselves the opportunities our great country offers by not wanting to learn English and limit themselves to regions of the country where only their native tongue is spoken. The best paid professions in the world rely on English as their common language. India has become a dynamic economy because English-speaking jobs get outsourced to India. People how aren't willing to learn English (and I mean standard, proper, grammatically correct English) are sentencing themselves to a lifetime of poorly-paid jobs and missed opportunities.

Additionally, every country with an official second language is permanently divided. While the teaching of foreign languages (in plural - considering China's ascendancy in the global scene, Mandarin comes in handy) should be compulsory in every school in our country, English is and should remain America's language. All the original documents that created this nation should be read in the original English to be fully understood.

Which brings me to Victor Davis Hanson: his experience mirrors mine when it comes to multi-lingual America,

I was watching Obama complain that we don't speak European languages while Europeans speak English fluently. Fair enough—though the vast size of the US, the presence of two oceans on our borders, the ubiquity of Spanish here, the knowledge of other languages by millions of Americans, both explain a lot, and belie the notion that we are all English-only speakers, while the multitude of nations in close proximity has historically made Europeans by necessity multi-lingual.

Hanson, a university professor, adds the educational angle:

But that said, Obama's previous idealization of minority-theme charter schools and the need for more "oppression studies" are precisely the sorts of therapeutic curricula that ensure Americans are not getting classical instruction in languages and literatures. We still await his visit to an inner-city school where he might lecture the student body and faculty that more Latin, French, math, and Shakespeare would do more to make students competitive in an increasingly tough, global job market than thousands of hours of oppression studies and victimization classes.

Obama is wrong in believing that "Immigrants will learn English" on their own well enough to meet the challenges of any well-paid profession. Immigrants need to learn the structure, grammar, syntax and pronunciation of proper English. I know this from my own personal experience. Additionally, when it comes to the instruction of foreign languages in schools, the more classroom hours you dedicate to "self-esteem" oriented or victimization studies, the fewer hours you'll have for rigorous academic curricula of any kind, foreign languages included.

And that's not the way to favorably impress the Europeans, or anyone. TigerHawk has more on that.



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Bill Ayers, Obama's hateful friend

The Obama affiliation with Weather Underground unrepentant ex-terrorists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers was the big story yesterday at a lot of blogs. I intentionally waited to post on it today because we should be paying attention for more than one news cycle.

Powerline Blog: The friends of Barack Obama, part I

It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States.

Go to Powerline to listen. Part II has more. Keep in mind that those clips are from a reunion in November 2007.

Marathon Pundit has much more in Ayers and Dohrn, starting here: Broadway Baby and Weather Underground. Follow the links.

Dohrn is now a law professor at Northwestern University. Her husband Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois.

Siggy points to this article: Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem
The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence (emphasis added)

Barack Obama complains that he's been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation's schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.
...
Chicago's liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers's case, and Obama can't be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation." Ayers's texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers's major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
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Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation’s schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization's national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation's classrooms—and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.

This is a particularly harmful waste of school hours for underprivileged children who need a strong and rigorous school curriculum since school is most likely the only place where they would learn literacy skills, without which they can not progress: Betsy asks,

Think of the problems that we have today in teaching literacy and basic math skills. Would any of those problems be ameliorated by teaching "social justice and liberation?"

Also via Siggy, At NPR

The issue, though, isn't what Ayers thought then; it's what he thinks now.

Read Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, which was published — in actual horrific irony — on Sept. 10, 2001. Though I have to admit it's pretty well written, it's filled with more paternalism ("A squad of cops in Cleveland had dragged Black men from a motel and shot them down in cold blood, and now we would, I thought, even the score.") and romanticism of what were ultimately terrorist acts. Ayers was also quoted in 2001 saying that he has no regrets for his past actions, but rather he feels that "we didn't do enough." Take a gander at his Web site and see if you find contrition or self-aggrandizement.

What someone did 40 years ago — within reason — should not damn that person forever. But that's assuming offending individuals pay their debt to society and repent. Ayers has done neither.

I genuinely hope Obama's got as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Ayers, and that Ayers is just, as Obama said in the debate, "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

Some neighborhood: There are Auchi, Rezko, and terrorist fundraisers, too.

Obama, Auchi, Rezko Timeline? A Conspiracy? Don't forget to check Rezkorama for developments on that case.

Terrorist fundraisers for Obama. Roundup and more at Stop the ACLU, visuals by Doug Ross.

Gateway Pundit links to videos:


The distractions? Or the reality?


Rick Moran asks, Is Obama in trouble?. Well, from looking at all the above, he ought to be.

Special thanks to Larwyn for the links.


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Bloomberg's not running, and other items

Maria tells me that Michael Bloomberg announced he's saving himself $100 million:

I'm Not Running for President, but ..., thank you for not running anyway, Mike.

Will he back McCain, or Obama?

Or will he be content with his new showbiz carreer?
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I've been banned in China, but have I been banned by the Air Force?

The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address.

Perhaps if I changed the blog name to Fausta's coffee-politics-books-and-shoes parlor?

John Noonan at The Weekly Standard points out,

Also problematic is the fact that USAF bloggers have been among the most credible advocates for force-modernization plans, offering their strong support for the acquisition of the full fleet of 380 F-22s in particular. The Air Force has in one fell swoop discarded a valuable media asset, forcing the public to rely on cumbersome--and typically boring--USAF press releases instead.

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Phyllis Chesler has written a beautiful tribute to a friend, An Elegy For My Friend "Babz," aka Barbara Seaman
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City Will Reward Students With Phones for showing up to school and behaving well. Who's paying for the monthly service and texting fees remains unclear but at least "the program is being privately financed".
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Speaking of schools, Betsy has the textbook case on how NOT to handle a cheating scandal: Cheating at Chapel Hill High School

Mamacita writes about Two Students: A Contrast. And Then Some More Opinionated Rants.
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How much does a house weigh?
(h/t Larwyn)
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When I turned on the TV this morning one of the talk shows was discussing whether men look good with a 3-day stubble.

The answer is NO.

If any of you guys have any doubt, the odds are that a 3-day stubble will remind ladies of Yasser, not Colin, and definitely not of Clive.

I hope that settles the issue.

You can thank me later.



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UK: "Don't teach children patriotism"

Yesterday I posted about the survey of British teens that showed that 23% of the respondents thought Winston Churchill was a myth. Churchill, who lead the British through its darkest hour, hasn't been dead for fifty years.

How does that ignorance come to be? One of the reasons might be found in this article (h/t No Pasaran), 'Don’t teach children patriotism'

Patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is "morally ambiguous", a leading educational body recommends.

History and citizenship lessons should stick to the bare facts rather than encouraging loyalty to Britain when covering subjects such as the Second World War or the British Empire, the Institute of Education researchers said. Teachers should not instill pride in what they consider great moments of British history, as more shameful episodes could be downplayed or excluded.

Like leaving out Winston Churchill, along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, perhaps?

At least someone's oferring some perspective,

However, 19 per cent of teachers and 16 per cent of teenagers thought schools should support patriotic views when expressed by pupils.The historian Tristram Hunt said of the institute's report: “I think it’s a very immature approach to the topic. The point is not whether history was right or wrong from a 21st Century liberal-left perspective. It's about teaching students to understand the mindset and context of our forebears.

“The real problem isn't that our children are being indoctrinated with patriotism, but that they don't know enough British history."

The slave trade, imperialism and 20th century wars should be taught as controversial issues while students are deciding how they feel about their country, the report says.

Labour is doing one grand job of educating this generation, indeed.



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Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll

I just found this at Memeorandum, and decided to post the entire article:
Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll

LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain's most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns' fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.

Gina Cobb comments,

It's frightening when gaps in basic knowledge become this great. How could any adult not know how England held on, rallied, and prevailed in World War II? How could the story of World War II be understood without knowing of this man, who warned of the threat posed by Adolph Hitler, was ignored until after the threat became real, and then fought against difficult odds for Britain's very survival?

How? By lapsing into post-modern, politically-correct curricula where anything Western is devalued, by getting rid of civics learning, by making people believe that patriotism is immoral, by insisting that students "feel good" rather than adhere to rigorous standards, and by a myriad other ways.

Mankind's natural inclination is to remain comfortably stupid. Real learning takes real work. Real learning in Western societies also has to be guided by humanistic and Judeo-Christian values because those are the values on which they are founded.

Kim at Wizbang links to Betsy's post from last summer describing how the Brits have destroyed their history curriculum.

Gina also links to this article, Muslim schools to conduct own inspections

In a controversial move, they have won the right to appoint their own Ofsted-style inspectors. A new independent watchdog has been set up to be more "sensitive" toward Islamic education.

The decision comes despite concerns some private Muslim schools are already failing to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.

Of course this raises concerns, which appear to go ignored:

Barry Sheerman, the chairman of the Commons schools select committee, told MPs last month local councils were finding it "difficult to know what is going on in some faith schools - particularly Muslim schools".

Britain is facing home-grown terrorists and is possibly opening the door to homegrown, self-supervised madrassas, all in the interest of "helping to promote integration". I can not fathom what logic process the British bureaucrats used to arrive at that conclusion.

How ironic that Sir Winston Churchill was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values".

UPDATE
The Telegraph article states that the survey asked 3,000 Brits in their teens. Considering how the history curriculum was destroyed, this is not surprising.



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Would you like some fries with that?

McDonald's serves up 'Diplomas'

McDonald's has won approval to offer courses which could form part of a qualification at the standard of A-levels or advanced Diplomas.
The fast-food giant, airline Flybe and Network Rail are the first firms to be approved to offer the Level 3 courses.

It means students could combine units from in-house courses with others to obtain the new Diplomas, which combine practical and theoretical learning.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this did not mean standards would fall.

Promises, promises ...

Not surprisingly,

Last week, four out of 10 university admissions tutors in a group of leading universities said they would not accept students who had taken the new Diplomas which are being introduced next autumn.

For an explanation of the British educational system, see Wikipedia

(h/t Siggy, who just posted the ultimate shopping list)



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Indoctrination education: your Delaware tax dollars in action

At the University of Delaware, you get treatment for your politically deficient attitudes:

According to the program's materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain "competencies" that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of "citizenship." These competencies include: "Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society," "Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression," and "Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality."

According to their criteria, Puerto Ricans like myself are racists, simply because my grandparents crossed the Atlantic and settled abroad:

"[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality."

And it'll cost you $16,098 if you're a Delaware resident, $27,348 if you're from out of state. I guess that part of their "consumer mentality" should not be affected.

Indoctrinate U, for sure.
Flopping Aces has DU's University President Patrick Harker's contact information:

Office of the President
University of Delaware
104 Hullihen Hall
Newark, DE 19716-0101
(302) 831-2111 FAX: (302) 831-1297
E-mail: harker@udel.edu



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Tony Woodlief writes about A Conflict of Vision

Both Betsy and Pajamas Media are linking to Tony Woodlief's WSJ article, Don't Suffer the Little Children
A father of four explains the realist approach to parenting

Another school year has sprung itself upon us, which is always an occasion for my wife, a former Detroit public-school teacher, and me to remind ourselves why we home-school. Part of the reason, in addition to my wife's expertise in this area, can be found in Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions," published 20 years ago. Mr. Sowell contrasted the "unconstrained vision" of utopians, who want to radically improve humankind, with the "constrained vision" of realists, who begin with the proposition that man is inherently self-interested, and not moldable into whatever form the high-minded types have in store for us once they get their itchy fingers on the levers of power. Mr. Sowell's book has been influential among conservatives for its compelling explanation of the divide between people who want to reshape us--often via large intrusions on liberty--and those who believe that the purpose of government is to protect institutions (like markets and families) that channel our inherent selfishness into productive behavior. It is also a handy guide for parenting.

I am sure my podcast listeners will remember Tony, who wrote the excellent pamphlet Raising Wild Boys Into Men: A Modern Dad's Survival Guide.

Dr. Sowell's excellent book, A Conflict of Visions, is still in print and can be ordered from Amazon.

Podcasting with Gerard and Siggy

In yesterday's podcast, I had the distinct pleasure of talking to two of the best bloggers around, Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest and Siggy of Sigmund, Carl and Alfred. We talked about anti-Americanism, English cooking (including toast) and several other topics.

On the subject of education, we discussed a generation of students growing up without a real education on what it means to be an American:
Gerard:

Classical education's being replaced by presentism and relativism

On middle class values and conditions:
Siggy:

When you are part of an economic group, you become an oppressor.... People are driven to hatred, and then to violence, when they realize they can not control others with their beliefs

Gerard:

Exactly; this is called the Vision of the Annointed, which is one of the best books I've ever read which outlines this mindset. The problem in America is that you have this great divide, and again, you have three generations of a certain elite leftist ideology that feeds upon itself that is driving the educational system, and not only that, is driving social services as well.

We also talked about commercialand, the pattycake war, the grains that bind, and Bill and Hillary.

The podcast is such fun, it might even be fattening.

All that, and Siggy and I discussed the necktie dilemma - Is Siggy a necktie guy?

Will Gerard and Siggy revoke my blogging license since I'm a morning blogger?

Listen to the podcast and find out!



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Today on Blog Talk Radio: Mamacita

Mamacita of Scheiss Weekly talks about education, parenting and role models in my next Blog Talk Radio program today, and Siggy co-hosts.

With those two, what more can a Blog Talk Radio Show hostess want? Well, she wants you to listen to the podcast.

Please join us today at noon Eastern Time on Monday, June 11.


Update: We talked about schooling, parenting, and education. I got caught in the conversation and we talked for nearly forty minutes. You can listen to the podcast here

Tomorrow my BTR guests will be Brian Darling and Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation. We will discuss Venezuela and Latin America. Please tune in at 4:30PM.

Tomorrow on Fausta's Blog Talk Radio: Mamacita of Scheiss Weekly

Mamacita of Scheiss Weekly talks about education, parenting and role models in my next Blog Talk Radio program tomorrow. Siggy co-hosts.

Please join us tomorrow at noon Eastern Time on Monday, June 11.

Cuban Catholics, and today's other items

Rather than repeat the success it had in Poland against the Communists, the Catholic Church in Cuba caves in again to Castro's pressure: Onward Christian Cubans

To appreciate just how worried Raul Castro is about the staying power of the Cuban dictatorship, look no further than the silencing last month of the small Catholic magazine, Vitral, by a newly anointed Cuban bishop. There can be little doubt that in shutting down Vitral the Church has yielded to state pressure.

Catholics, working in dissident groups such as the Christian Liberation Movement led by Oswaldo Paya, are a clear and present danger to the regime and, despite a harsh crackdown on them since 2003, are showing no signs of retreat. The magazine is a symbol of this unyielding dissent and thus it has to go.

What is more troubling for Catholics, both inside and outside the country, is what the gag order says about the Church's leadership, which has long been accused of preferring collaboration over confrontation with the dictatorship. Considering what happened in Poland, many had hoped the Church might lead the Cuban people to freedom. But now Catholics on the island are expressing a painful sense of betrayal. Whether out of fear of or sympathy with the regime, the Church seems to have capitulated.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady explains on video what the Cuban Catholic dissidents are fighting for.
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"Conservative Credits" Press Release
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Urban Infidel took pictures of the Salute to Israel Parade
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Teaching for Social Justice, pdf file, via Larwyn,

For a sampling of the many guises social justice teaching takes, we can start with a little show and tell from the nation's largest public school district.

The Katrina Monologues

On a Friday night in October, 2006 I attended a public meeting of a three-year old organization called the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE). About 80 public school teachers from all grades were gathered at Kimball Hall on the NYU campus in Greenwich Village to discuss current approaches to social justice teaching. One of the central motifs of this discussion was how to subvert the official curriculum mandates of New York City's Department of Education. NYCoRE's official slogan -- "The struggle for justice does not end when the school bell rings" - was displayed on the literature, posters and the T shirts available for sale at the meeting. Posted on the walls of the room were inspirational quotes by some of NYCoRE's educational heroes, including Che Guevara and Marxist historian Howard Zinn. "It's not possible to be neutral in the classroom," proclaimed the quotation from Professor Zinn. "I as a teacher don't want to collaborate with whatever is happening in the world. I want myself as a teacher and I want you as students to intercede in whatever is happening in the world." Also distributed at the meeting was an iconic photograph from revolutionary Cuba's mass literacy campaign, cited by one of the evening's speakers as an exemplary progressive education program.

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How Britain Encouraged Radicalism And Terrorism - Part One of Four
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Today's Blog Talk Radio podcast has been cancelled. Roger has a work emergency and I have to go to the dentist.
But listen to last week's podcast with Judith, Mary, Noah and Ben - Judith has pictures

The integration debate, and what we can learn from it

The NY Times has an article on the immigration debate in France titled, In French Bid, Immigrant's Son Battles Reputation as Anti-Immigrant. In it, at least they give Sarko credit:

The possible next president of France is the son of an immigrant with a very un-French name who has done as much, if not more, than any other French official to improve the status of minorities.

He knows the pain of being an outsider and even advocates American-style affirmative action, heresy for many people in officially colorblind, egalitarian France.

The problem is that no matter how much France wants to officially paint itself colorblind and egalitarian, it is not. Everything in France is determined by who you know, what school you attend, and what colleges you graduate from. Nobody knows that better than Sarko:

Mr. Sarkozy himself has struggled as an outsider, describing himself as a "little Frenchman of mixed blood" who rose to the top of French politics without going through the normal channels of the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration as Ms. Royal did.

At the same time, France has a large minority of unintegrated aliens who have lived there for generations. Whether the French assumed that the immigrants would "naturally" become French out of their own initiative, or didn't care, the fact is that these unintegrated long-term residents, many of which are illegal aliens, have become a huge problem. While the NYT first referred to these individuals as "youths", the customary euphemism, later on in the article (13th paragraph) it does mention that the "youths" are mostly Muslim.

Sarko has favored aggressive action to integrate them into French society,

He encouraged the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which gave Islam a voice in France. He appointed the first prefect in France who is both foreign-born and Muslim. He has even argued for relaxing rules that restrict government support for building mosques.

And he supports affirmative action, which the Socialists steadfastly oppose.

In addition, Sarko has suggested that the illegal aliens be granted the right to vote in local elections. But there's one thing: he wants integration, not accommodation:

While Mr. Sarkozy has moderated his language and struck a more conciliatory tone in the presidential campaign, he did not help matters by proposing last year that France have a ministry of immigration and national identity to ensure that new citizens adhered to France's secular values.

To many people in the suburbs, the idea seemed to be a way to suppress cultural differences in favor of a traditional French way of life.

Those cultural differences have become a huge rift in the social fabric. That is always the cast when a section of the residents of a country are not integrated. Many other European countries are in the same quandary.

And that brings us to the crux of any discussion regarding immigration: integration.

In France, as elsewhere, opportunists will use the rifts for their own perfidious purposes: witness Segolene Royal's statement that

if he [Sarkozy] is elected, "democracy will be threatened," The Associated Press reported. She said she felt a "responsibility to raise the alert about the risks of this candidacy and the violence and brutality that will be set off in the country."

Political opportunism can be found anywhere in the world. Political opportunism will not get anyone integrated into anything other than discord and strife.

I have discussed immigration on Blog Talk Radio with my guests Pieter Dorsman and Siggy, and with Captain Ed; and also privately with my neighbor TigerHawk. We all have independently arrived at the same conclusion: integration is the issue.

Integration can be even more problematic when there's a religious aspect: As Pieter said in his blog after our conversation,

It is important to understand that failed Muslim integration to a large extent has resulted from the long held belief that allowing different religious pillars to exist in The Netherlands would contribute to a solution like it had in the past for the Catholic-Protestant divide on which the nation was built. The problem is that a template for neutralizing religious tensions between a culturally and economically largely homogenous group has limited use to integrate a group that both ethnically and economically occupies a different and separate world. Add to that the fact that Catholic and Protestant structures have largely become defunct in one of Europe's most secular nations and you can picture the divergent tracks in Dutch society.

Even among Catholics and Protestants, one of the things I discussed with Captain Ed is that many churches are not facilitating integration because they hold foreign-language services. The newcomers are made to remain aliens.

Important as it is, the religious aspect is only one part of the problem. Both in Europe and in the USA we now have a new kind of immigrant - those who, to use Siggy's words,

"they don't say I want to participate, they don't say I want to contribute, they say, I want".

The task of any society is to teach its citizenry what it means to be a citizen of that society. A large part of being a citizen of any society is knowing that participating and contributing is at least as important as demanding.

We are doomed to relive France's current problems in America if we don't make a concerted effort to integrate and assimilate immigrants.

In America's case, the first place to start is with language.

As I have mentioned before, children of immigrants need to learn English in order to fully master American life. For them not to master English means a handicapped life.

But acculturation is not simply being bilingual:

Prior generations of immigrants, once they arrived in the USA were taught, by the public schools and by other civic organizations, traditional American values; more specifically, middle-class, Protestant values, within a Judeo-Christian tradition. People learned to read English by reading the King James Bible. The Protestant work ethic was promoted through Horatio Alger stories, and the value of delayed gratification was spoken of. School curricula stressed discipline and the "three R's", and included famous sermons, such as Governor John Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity. People were taught and encouraged to serve their communities through volunteering, a most American trait. In short, immigrants were directed towards what it meant to live in an American culture; no one assumed that simply knowing the language meant one was acculturated.

In today's PC environment, that has nearly disappeared from the curricula.

Today is Cinco de Mayo, a minor holiday in Mexico that is given a lot of publicity in the USA.

Here in Princeton the Princeton Shopping Center had a live salsa band (I didn't ask the musicians where they were from, but Mexican salsa is something you eat, Caribbean salsa is something you dance to), pony rides for the kids and hot dogs for all. In all, a pretty well integrated atmosphere for a festive day in truly glorious Spring weather. Cinco de Mayo's as good a name as May Madness, as far as I'm concerned, while May 5th would be even better.

By all means, have a Cinco de Mayo party, celebrate St Patricks, Columbus Day and every other holiday. I'm certainly in favor of celebrating and getting as much joy out of life as we can.

But let's not have a lesson unlearned: what the French are dealing with now can happen here.

Integration is the key.

More on the French elections tomorrow.

Update, Sunday 6 May Pieter Dorsman has an excellent article about Holland. I'll post more on it later this week.

Indoctrinate U, and today's items

Indoctrinate U"
I wasn't able to attend the screening, but Mitchell Langbert did: A Classic in the Making

On April 23 and 24 the Tribeca film festival in lower Manhattan, which is continuing through May 6, screened Indoctrinate U, Evan Maloney's documentary about political correctness in American universities. The film depicts universities run amuck. Fascistic, intolerant leftists attack Asian Republicans, white males, libertarian females, conservative white females, conservative Sikh males (not to mention libertarian black writers and Asian libertarian conservative males). The film is funny, lively and ultimately frightening. Maloney's delivery is witty and sharp. The film is well-edited. One is riveted to the screen. The interviewees, who include my colleagueKC Johnson and FIRE's Glen Lukianoff, are articulate and brilliant. The film will not surprise the few conservatives in academe who work among the politically correct majority. Nor will it surprise conservative students who have been subjected to the harassment the film depicts and seen their careers ruined by liberal witchhunters, speech code advocates and a wide range of left-wing jackboots. But the public at large, the broader community, those who believe that students go to Yale, Bucknell, Cal Poly Tech, and their equivalents to be educated will be stunned.

Speaking of academia, Cinnamon posts on Brown University Workshop Speaks to Fear and Loathing in Middle East Studies After 9-11

The only problem is workshop participants are almost uniformly composed of academics who are hostile to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, its ally, Israel, and any efforts via higher education to combat radical Islam on college campuses.

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Thanks to Larwyn for today's links
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Time for Dictators But No Time for American Generals
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Gaius fisks Naomi
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Patrick sent a nice YouTube of Giuliani in New Hampshire this week,

Patrick also sent McCain surges among New Hampshire conservatives
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Jeremayakovka sends this article, 'Making War to Keep Peace' is a fine tribute to Jeane Kirkpatrick

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Update: Don't miss Cassandra's NYTimesWatch: The Lynching Of Paul Wolfowitz

CHANGE IN SCHEDULE: Podcast today at 11:30 tomorrow at 11AM

Upddate: We had phone connection problems so tomorrow April 24 at 11AM we'll have Angela talk about her book, hopefully without broken phone connections.
Please tune in, and thank you for your patience

Please note that Angela's travel schedule was changed by her airline, so our podcast today will be at 11:30AM
We'll be talking about her book, Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda


Please join us!

Tomorrow on Fausta's Blog Talk Radio: Angela McGlowan

Tomorrow at noon 11:30 (please note change in time), my Blog Talk Radio Guest will be Angela McGlowan, author of Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda


Please join us!

Nigeria, and today's items

Taleban terror attacks in Nigeria:
In the BBCA newscast this morning, The Nigerian army has launched an offensive to evacuate armed Islamic militants from the outskirts of the northern city of Kano; the Beeb tries to measure its words but finally gets to the point,

Islamists, known as the Taleban, hold an area of the town

The BBC's country profile states,

The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land.

Captain Ed points out,

Even the introduction of Islamic law in Kano did not stop Islamist terrorists from taking the law into their own hands. They killed the police that administer shari'a in Kano. With radical Muslims attacking shari'a police, what chance do the Christians have in peacefully co-existing with them?

This also points out the folly of those who believe that we can reach accommodation with radical Islamists. They do not act rationally, instead relying on violence and intimidation to extort the behavior they seek. Even fellow Islamists have no immunity from attack and annihilation. Islamists have begun to run wild in Nigeria, and unless something changes soon, it will follow Sudan in crumbling into civil war.

Nigeria is the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter.
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A Minority View: Exploiting Ignorance

So many Americans graduate high school and college having learned what to think as opposed to acquiring the tools of critical, independent thinking. Likewise, they have learned little about our nation's history. As such, they fall prey to the rhetoric of political charlatans and quacks. Let's look at a couple of examples.

Read it all.
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Interesting post by Howard Katz on The Collapse of the Dollar

If any of the larger banks start to sell their dollars, then the price of U.S. securities will collapse. The price of the dollar in international exchange will fall. And if the Federal Reserve intervenes to moderate these results, then the U.S. money supply will explode to the upside. The decline in U.S. securities will be equivalent to a serious rise in interest rates.

Right now world central bankers are concerned about this problem. In international financial circles, it is the elephant in the room: the great big fact that everyone pretends will go away if ignored. But of course, if 78.43 is broken in the U.S. dollar index, this will be an all-time low, and a great deal of attention will be focused on the situation.

While I believe the scenario is rather unlikely, it can not be ignored.
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Hitchens: Sliming Wolfowitz: The World Bank president did nothing wrong
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Gov. Corzine was flying down the turnpike at 91 mph when the accident occured.
Contrast and compare the media coverage with Dick Cheney's hunting accident.
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Soaked, in every sense of the word: TigerHawk posts about Who pays the federal income tax, and who does not

Special thanks to Larwyn for the links
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More blogging later. In the meantime, go listen to the Blog Talk Radio podcast.

Hospitals in Havana, celebrities in college

A friend sent me this,

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science

And the

International Latino Health Research Institute

Present

¡Salud!


- a film about the pressing health issues facing the world today and the role of Cuba in global health.

How can we get enough doctors and health workers to where they are needed most? How and why has Cuba sent 100,000 doctors to work in the poorest parts of over 70 countries in just 10 years?
What can we learn from Cuba's approach to medical education and healthcare!

¡Salud! was a huge success at the Pan African American Film Festival in 2007.

Please Join Us

After the free showing of the film, there will be a question and answer session with Honduran Doctor, Dr Luther Castillo, a recent graduate of the innovative
Latin American Medical School in Cuba
Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:00PM

Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
Keck Auditorium
1731 E. 120th Street
Los Angeles , CA 90059

That's right, folks: a university of "medicine and science" is lending itself to be a Communist propaganda tool for Cuba. The hospital they run (see correction below) is a disaster (h/t Ziva)

Patients linger unattended, walls are gouged with holes, mattresses are worn and stained, even ink cartridges are in short supply.

Small wonder they admire Cuban healthcare.
CORRECTION: I have been advised by someone familiar with the university that the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science is not tied to the hospital, and is suing the hospital for mismagement. My apologies for the error.

Update: No more support of “doctor diplomacy” please

At other colleges across the USA, there's the culture of celebrity: Colleges Raise Profiles With Celebrities, and Oscar winner Al Gore is one of them.

Let's hope he's not teaching science.

It's time to ditch bilingual ed

Today at RCP Tony Blankley writes about Newt, Bilingual Ed and the PC Police (emphasis added):

Likewise today, Spanish is a magnificent language proudly spoken by people around the world. But in the United States, while the language remains beautiful and noble, those Hispanic-American children who are discouraged from learning English (by a bilingual policy that retards rather than advances the learning of English) are and will continue to be culturally and economically ghettoized by their inability to read, write and speak English.

Not that Blankley or Grinwrich are saying anything new. Thousands of Hispanics have been saying the same thing.

(BTW, there are no "Hispanics" outside the USA; once we all leave the continental USA we are Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, Uruguayans, or whatever. "Hispanic" is a construct, and I'm using right now because it's expedient.)

Among the thousands of Hispanics who decry bilingual education is Herman Badillo, who actually introduced and was instrumental passing in Congress the bilingual voting and bilingual education programs. In his book, One Nation, One Standard, Badillo again and again realizes that

(page 65) Reexamining bilingual education, the Board of Education released a study concluding that efforts to educate tens of thousands of students in their native languages were flawed. The study found that students - even recent immigrants - who took most of their classes in English generally fared better academically than did students in bilingual programs, where little English was spoken.

(page 67) Bilingual education requires an average of four to seven years before students master english, but immersion programs accelerate that to as little as one year. Immersion's benefits are most dramatic for immigrant children in the early grades.

Last year I pointed out

Take a look at the professions where English prevails, not only in the USA, but across the world:

engineering
computers
other technology
natural sciences
medicine
financial institutions such as banks, stock markets, commodities markets, and trade in government-issued securities
accounting
economics
international law

A small amount of research will show you that those are the highest paid occupations in the world.
... While Harry Reid bellyaches about job outsourcing to China, he should take a look at the high-skilled jobs being outsourced: I guarantee you that the best Chinese engineers with world-class skills, like engineers all around the world, learned English.

Harry should also try getting hold of his friendly tech support hotline person. The odds are the person is in India. India's become a preferred place for outsourcing jobs because India's an English-speaking country. Again, English pays:

India's IT and outsourcing sector is currently worth about $22bn and expected to grow by 25% until the end of the decade, it said.

India is actively courting more investors, and its economy will continue to grow in those areas.

Tony Blankley continues, and finds the real reason for the PC outrage:

It is not hateful of Newt to point that out. It is hateful of ideological "civil rights" activists to try to intimidate any politician who would dare to liberate kids from the linguistic ghetto that serves the political power of these "civil rights" activists. Once these kids have mastered English and fully entered American life, they will no longer be vote fodder for the "civil rights" activists' political ambitions.

The special interest ethnic activists prefer to have a new generation of clients, rather than a new generation of fully integrated American citizens. And what they fear is an honest and open debate on the bilingual teaching method.

Teaching in the native language (bilingual ed) combined with ballot measures and government and consumer information in the native language is establishing a dubious result today -- as millions of immigrants are given just enough such linguistic help to let them function minimally in America (without learning English), but not enough to participate fully in our great country, economy and culture

Poor people move to this country to benefit from our riches. Denying them the instruction they need in English is, as Roger said, condemning those same immigrants to a life of poverty and bad jobs.

Every child, every adult, in our country needs to be fully literate in English. I can't say it enough.

Prior posts
Badillo speaks out on education
Krauthammer on assimilation
Acculturation is not simply being bilingual

technorati tags bilingual education, education

The Tragedy of Islamic Indoctrination In British Schools

Adrian Morgan writes about what happens without the "establishment clause" of the American Constitution:

The demons of political correctness have so deeply infiltrated the National Curriculum documentation that each time Mohammed's name appears, the Arabic symbol for his name is displayed afterwards. Unit 5B Section 2 is intended to indoctrinate children thus: "Children should learn: why Muslims have instructions for worship, how Muslims show concern for others, how Muslims care for people in the community, that abstinence from food plays a part in religious observance." In Unit 5A, Section 2, teachers are told that their pupils must learn " to understand that the Qur'an is fundamental to Muslims because it is the 'word of God'." Note the characterization: the Koran "is" the word of God, not "it is believed by Muslims to be" the word of God.

Unit 5A, Section 1, instructs teachers to: "Ask the children to copy the Shahadah and write a short explanation of the beliefs it expresses." The Shahadah is the statement of belief that signals conversion to Islam. To make young children write out this declaration is a blasphemy against any other faith the child may belong to, including atheism.

This government-sanctioned political correctness led my sister, a teacher for 30 years, to tell her school that she would no longer teach the National Curriculum's version of religious education, and would teach only her specialist subject, history.

Go read every word.

Cross-posted at MNM, where a commenter mentioned an analogous situation in the USA.