lunes, 24 de mayo de 2010

Arizona Goes After Teachers With Accents

Holy shit …

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

The teacher controversy comes amid an increasingly tense debate over immigration. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer this month signed the nation’s toughest law to crack down on illegal immigrants. Critics charge that the broader political climate has emboldened state education officials to target immigrant teachers at a time when a budget crisis has forced layoffs.

“This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research.

(from the Wall Street Journal, via Raw Story.)

But, you know, the federal government has failed to protect the nation’s schools from accented speech, so Arizona state officials had to reluctantly step in and do the job for them.

On a completely unrelated note, Arizona schools face a dire shortage of teachers.

Tana Ganeva is an AlterNet.org editor. Follow her on Twitter. You can email her at tanaalternet@gmail.com

Posted via email from apm35's posterous

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