Title of Case: Lau v. Nichols: 414 US (1974) Plaintiff: Kinney Lau Defendants: Alan Nichols, San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Setting: This occurred in San Francisco, CA during the early to middle 1970’s.
For as long as people can remember, the stereotype that men have “more power” than women in a relationship has been a relevant argument. In the novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents the Author, Julia Alvarez, writes about four girls and part of that revolves around their relationships with men. In all of their relationships with men, he has the power in the relationship which means he makes the decisions for them. When they lived in the United States the girls and their mother had more say in the society. When they lived in the Dominican Republic men just saw them as submissive housewives who bear their children.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents explores Garcia’s family bond through the journey of them settling in as immigrants. The author, Julia Alvarez uses various incidents in the book to portray the importance of family and how the bonds of the family helped them to survive many stressful situations. The first incident that showed the family overcoming a difficult situation for the sake of family was in The Kiss Chapter. In the chapter, we saw a father-daughter conflict being unraveled.
They way a person reads is greatly influenced by their personal background; their story, their culture, anything that led them to who they are today. When reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents written by Dominican-American Julia Alvarez, many controversial points are brought up that can be interpreted in many different ways depending on who is reading. In many scenarios, it’s the matter of where the reader comes from, in this case the Dominican Republic, or the United States. By having written from both Dominican and American perspectives, Alvarez teaches how a character’s sexuality or sexual tendencies can be perceived differently depending on the reader's personal background.
Coming of Age Life is all about choices and how we choose to make them. Who we are and where we go in life is largely determined by decisions that we choose to make: where we go to college, who our friends are, who we eventually decide to marry. However, sometimes in life, we encounter a situation where we are forced to mature maybe before we are ready. In my case, my younger brother was born when I was seven with a multitude of health problems. While my parents were preoccupied with taking care of him, I sometimes was forced to fend for myself and making sure my younger sister was cared for.
Rodriguez’s English was not the best, and because of that he would either be silent or quietly mumble when asked to participate by one of the nuns (73). Since his lack of participation was noticeable and showed little progress, some of his teachers visited Rodriguez’s home to ask his parents to “encourage your children to practice their English when they are home?” (73). Rodriguez one day walks in on his parents speaking Spanish, but when they see him they switch to English, which offends and over the days that follows angers him enough to decide to seriously learn English. Rodriguez even willingly decides to participate in class (74).
That is why Filemon Lopez, who is part of the Benito Juarez Civic Association states that they are working hard to teach the Mixtecs their rights, about the importance of health, housing but overall of education. Even in the Madera school district, the importance of education is being advocated for, for teachers such as Carmen Hernandez states that it is important that both children like adults learn both Spanish and English, so that they can later be able to function in an English speaking society, but also so that they can keep their language and their pride in their background. Such as in the lecture about linguistic anthropology lecture that we went over in class, where it was explained that for the most part once English was learned that native languages were used less and less then forgotten, for only a subset of the population usually those who are older are the only ones who maintain the language going until they are gone. That is why Carmen emphasizes the importance of providing bilingual classes for Mixtec adults and children. So that in the future as Apuleyo Guzman states, that he hopes to learn more English so that he can get a better job so that e can get a better job, so that he can better provided for his family and his village, yet also still has his culture, his language and his ties to
English and Spanish, the two dogs in this analogy, are the two cultures he nurtures and adores. Despite one culture being more dominant over the other, they are still two different parts of his identity that he must take care of. Compared to Espada’s essay, Rodriguez seems to approach the definition of bilingualism from a completely different perspective. Rodriguez sees bilingualism as a connection to one’s public identity. He mentions his definition near the beginning of his essay, where Rodriguez talks about how his previous non-bilingual self would have been pleased if the teachers had spoken Spanish.
As a diverse country that the United States is, many of the new generations are becoming mixtures of different countries. There is always a great deal taking place when immigrants migrate to another country especially in the United States since it is a melting pot. When first arriving to a new country, the immigrants tend to still follow their tradition because they still want to be a perfect representation of their origin country; in this case it would be Dominican from the book “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”. Although, they are now living in a new country where “change” plays a huge role in their lives. The Garcia family are open to change because they want to form part in the U.S. since Dominican Republic is going through major
Samuel Huntington’s article The Hispanic Challenge argues that Hispanics, specifically Mexicans, are not true American citizens. According to Huntington, Americans are people who believe in the American creed. However, he believes this creed is being threatened. For some time now, large influxes of Hispanic immigrants have been coming to the US and have brought their own culture with them. The writer of Speaking in Tongues, Gloria Anzaldua, believes that Hispanics have the right to hold onto their culture in America.
Identity Crisis In “Se Habla Espanol” by Tanya Maria Barrientos, speaking multiple languages at the time of Barrientos being a child, was not perceived as a bonus on your job application. When she was just three years old she was moved to the states and her parents completely stopped using Spanish and taught their children English. They did this in order to provide a better education for their children in America. They knew that if they spoke Spanish, they would be perceived as poor individuals.
His narrative shows this support and how having instruction in Spanish and English allows him to have higher academics. In less than ten years, one third of students attending public schools will not know English when starting Kindergarten. Are schools and teachers ready for this and will push for bilingual instruction? Is America ready for this? As for now, there is mixed perspectives.
A majority of the United States’ population has a different native language than English. Kathleen Escamilla, an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Arizona, states that sixty-one percent of those people share a common native language: Spanish. Because of the rising numbers of students not being fluent in English the United States began to incorporate bilingual education programs into schools so that these students could be taught English. Bilingual education programs “involve placing English as a second language (ESL) students in classrooms where instruction is given in both English and the students’ native language” according to Lee and McMahon. Since the emergence of the programs, several laws and amendments passed through Congress to make bilingual education programs more efficient.
The Requirement of Learning a Foreign Language In American Education Wouldn’t it be fun to go visit a country, without the embarrassment of having an interpreter? Or learning about foreign cultures and languages in class with your best friends? Languages are very important in multiple countries around the world, but it's not the same case in America. Compared to 56% of the European population in 2006 recorded by the European Commission claiming to be bilingual, meaning that they could speak two languages fluently, only 15 to 20 percent of the American population actually fit that category. Americans are suffering from inadequate education about foreign languages.
Even though all of us were required or are currently taking a foreign language here at Woodberry and at almost all schools across America. For the most part we began in the 8th or 9th grade. Yet this isn’t helping increase bilingualism in America. I know I had a difficult time starting to learn a foreign language in 8th grade. And as you can see in the handout you have, the majority of students agreed with me, that learning a foreign language was difficult for them too.