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Date Posted: 13:24:12 01/03/08 Thu
Author: JMR
Subject: English-only order violates Constitution??

January 03, 2008
English-only order violates Constitution
The Issue: A superintendent in Nevada orders high school students to speak only English while at school and on school buses.

Our Opinion: Even if his intent was to help the students succeed once they graduate, the school administrator was out of line.


It isn’t difficult to understand what the superintendent in a rural Nevada school district was trying to do when he ordered all high school students to speak only English while on school buses and at school.

Although English never has been declared the official language of this country, it is by far the dominant language, and anyone who wants to be successful at virtually any endeavor here should be fluent in English.

But Robert Aumagher was wrong when he sent a letter Oct. 12 to parents in the Esmeralda County School District restricting high school students to English while at school and on school buses.

The rule impacts about 30 students from about a dozen families. Most of the students are children of immigrants working on farms and ranches in the school district.

It is interesting to note that someone in the district had to translate the letter into Spanish so that families of the students would understand it.

There could be two reasons for the superintendent to issue the English-only order: He wants to encourage the use of English so students will have a better shot at success once they graduate, or he has been caught up in the wave against illegal immigration that seems to be sweeping the country.

We’d prefer to think Aumagher’s motives were purely educational, but there are others who have suggested they are rooted in the federal government’s inability to control the nation’s borders.

“Because we have a dysfunctional immigration system and in the absence of congressional reform, what we have is a thousand flowers in bloom on the local level, except a lot of them are weeds,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California. “It’s a haphazard way of addressing locally what should be addressed nationally.”

Whether that was the superintendent’s intention or not, he clearly was off base. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, and it doesn’t say anything about that speech being restricted to English.

And the federal courts repeatedly have ruled that the Constitution is not suspended when a student boards a school bus or walks through the schoolhouse door.

Maggie McLetchie, counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, told the Las Vegas Sun her organization would contact Aumagher and encourage him to reverse his position.

Regardless of Aumagher’s intention, he should lift his English-only rule.

If his intent was to help students succeed, he would be far more effective if he found a way to encourage the use of English as opposed to ordering it. Perhaps some sort of extra credit or increase in grades could be used to accelerate the transition to English.

As we have said on many occasions, history indicates that it takes three generations for the vast majority of immigrant families — regardless of their home nation — to become fully functional in English.

The first generation primarily speaks its native language. The second generation usually speaks both the native language and English. By the third generation, it usually is English only.

If Aumagher’s intent was to make up for an ineffective federal government that cannot control its borders, he is in the wrong job. He should run for Congress and help establish a better immigration policy.

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