Arizona

[asterroc]

In case you missed it the first time, Arizona education is going down the drain, and now there's a second reason. I worry for the baby of a couple friends of mine who live in Arizona.

1) K-12 teachers with "accents" will be "removed" from the classroom. This is based on a misinterpretation of federal law requiring teachers to be "fluent" in English.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2365

2) A new law bans ethnic studies classes, claiming they "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, [and] promote resentment of a particular race or class of people".
http://www.cyberdrumm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26:welcomeunderachieving-schools&catid=6&Itemid=40

I'm looking forward to visiting Arizona in the future, where I'm sure the children will be learning proper British English due to removing all teachers with American accents, and where their minds will not have been sullied by all those White Studies classes. </bitter>

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Fluent, yes. The Federal law does say that teachers have to be fluent in English, and I strongly agree with that. But "unaccented," no. Who defines what's an acceptable accent?

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

That's why I find it so funny. I've been to schools where a standard Midwest accent was the anomaly, and I had a teacher with such a thick Southern accent that she pronounced "cell" as "sail". That made my biology class interesting when she asked for us to define our impression of a "cell" on the second day of class.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

And one of my earliest science teachers in high school had such a thick Eastern European accent I couldn't tell "molality" from "molarity" from "morality".

[oh-chris.livejournal.com]

that teacher is why i'm not a chemical engineer, for exactly the reason you mentioned.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Heh. For me it's probably Doc. ;) Fun guy, didn't teach me crap. I did better on the part of the regents I taught myself than the parts he supposedly taught me.