¿Que´ Pasa? Sac Pase? What's up with the hullabaloo over bilingual education? I wish the left would find someone like me to make outrageous statements to promote our agenda.

I know quite a bit about bilingual education. After all, I teach math and science to English language learners. Sure Tony, immersion works ... but only for some people. It's a great way to learn English, but common sense should tell you that immersion is not nearly as effective when teaching students how to solve a word problem using the Pythagorean Theorem. There are many newcomers in my school that are placed directly into English speaking classrooms. However, most students benefit from a transition ELL (English Language Learners) program. I'm not even going to discuss how many teachers are unwilling and/or unable to accommodate struggling language learners in their classes.

ELL programs are for students like Rigins. Rigins came from Haiti over ten years ago. He never went to school. He would spend the day sitting on the side of a mountain selling bananas for firewood. He couldn't read or even write his name. He would copy the "g" in his name out of a book with all the curley q's, so you couldn't even tell it was a g. He was 14 years old. With the help of school programs and a caring uncle, Rigins received his high school diploma and is now an assistant manager at a large supermarket chain here in Florida. He can't see his mother in Haiti, who sacrificed to send him here, but he sends her money from his paycheck every week. He is where he is today because of the sacrifices he made and the support he received. It's called the American Dream.

I look at it this way. If a student enters this country in his/her twelfth grade year, and doesn't speak a word of English, how successful will the immersion program really be? I don't see how an immersion program would give the student the opportunity to receive a high school diploma in a timely manner.

I would just like to make one more point that I usually make to anyone who spouts this kind of nonsense. I speak two language (Spanish and English) and am learning a third (Haitian Creole.) How many languages does Andrew and Newt speak? Learning English is called language acquisition, not patriotism. Many of my students are learning English as a third or even fourth language. This country is the only country that I know of with a monolingual mindset, except, perhaps, for France.

Newt and Andrew would like to prevent multiculturalism from happening here in America. My ancestry traces back to the Revolutionary War. They can't tell me what's American. There's no difference between cantinas and pizza parlors in my book.

As for English Only, the government overhauled the election process for blind people, and the country ended up with a shitload of expensive pieces of crap that have counted our votes ever since. Do you know how many voters needed the assistance that HAVA provided for during the last presidential election at the precinct that I worked at? One very nice wheel chair bound veteran who wasn't blind.

Don't get me wrong. I'm practically blind myself and probably will be one day. I want to be able to vote when that day comes. Likewise, there are non English speaking people who pay taxes, some of them even fight for this country, and couldn't vote if it wasn't for special accommodations like printing the ballots in their home language. Printing a ballot in another language doesn't hurt anyone, or doesn't even cost that much. Newt, Andrew, and the other fools, should start blasting HAVA. Its cost was far greater.  ¶ 12:01 PM