Arizona Expands Its Discrimination: Teachers With Heavy Accents Can’t Teach

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/30/arizona-teachers/
Teachers With Heavy Accents Can’t Teach English, Ethnic Studies Are Banned

Arizona’s supporters of the state’s draconian new immigration law insist that it has nothing to do with race and isn’t meant to discriminate against certain ethnic communities. Their claims are undermined, however, by what else the state government is trying to do to target recent immigrants.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that 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”:

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators. <...>

“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.

But many schools in the state still have a significant number of teachers who are native Spanish speakers. At one school, state auditors complained that teachers pronounced “words such as violet as ‘biolet,’ think as ‘tink’ and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.” The principal at that school acknowledged that teachers “should speak grammatically correct English” but said they shouldn’t be punished for having an accent.

Teachers that aren’t up to par “may take classes or other steps to improve their English,” and if they still aren’t fluent enough for the state, they will be fired or reassigned.

Adding insult to injury, the Arizona legislature passed a bill yesterday outlawing ethnic studies programs:

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

The measure is directed at the Tuscon Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department, which school officials say provides only “historical information” — not “ethnic chauvanism” as the state school superintendent has alleged. One state lawmaker tried to show how ridiculous the legislation is by proposing that schools be barred from teaching about 9/11 because it would result in hatred toward Arab-Americans; the measure failed.

Or, heavy Brooklyn accents?

creationism classes.

would my Okie accent keep me from getting a job? This is getting more insane every day. And what about the Spanish Immersion classes? Will this target and dismantle this program?

AZ will have to change their state flag to include a swastika.

Wow..nothing covert about their racism now eh?

Technically it was a Navajo swastika, and not a Nazi swastika, but they didn't remove it from the signs until well into the 1950's, long after the symbol was associated with old Adolf and his genocidal rampage across Europe.

Maybe Frau Brewer will sign a law to bring them back?

in a school bldg or something in a post here a few years ago. The school put a rug over it.

if I had a notion to teach there.

'Cause for me, it's "fiolet" and "þink" - way too much time spent around Norwegians, yah yoo betcha.

I wonder if they also mean teachers who have accents saturated with accents from the Deep South of the US? Alabama...Mississippi....Texas...etc.

Or maybe teachers from the Northeast. Boston accents. Maine. New Hampshire. New York City.


That's a lot of other territory to exclude while they're excluding "you know who".


sigh...stoooopid.

:sarcasm:

That was the worst grade I got in my life. I had to retake it from a Chinese prof with a lighter accent and I got an A.

Even heavy British accents give me problems so much so that I can't follow some movies. The heavy southern accent in No country for old men messed me up too.

who had a very heavy accent. Even though I had lived around the world and dealt with many accents, I could not understand much that he said during class. I only stuck it out because it was a class at the girl's college and I was hoping to find a date.

Even their idiot Governor can't tell the Press what an illegal looks like! What a fucked up state.

Not that it is necessary to parrot the accent, but to hear what words sound like when pronounced by a native speaker would seem helpful. I learned Spanish from a native speaker for 3 years, then from an native English-speaking American woman (think Peggy Hill with white hair). I learned much more from the former. But I laughed a lot more at the latter.

She was also the best grammar teacher I'd ever have.

ETA: She was from Scotland.