Talking Points Pt. II

The Collier article was interesting in giving directions to help establish a bilingual classroom. One thing I liked about this article was setting up times when to speak different languages, and also the importance of not punishing a children or student if they “slip” into their own language while learning English. There is much importance to not allowing a student lose a connection with their own native languages while they are learning English, there has to be patience involved, especially for students who are older, since it’s a lot harder to learn a new language the older you get. I believe Delpit would also of course along with this instructional article call for the importance to teach these students the codes of power, where as we are not talking about “slang” but we are talking about a whole other language and an adjustment to learning not only English but the learning the laws and language of those who hold power in order to succeed to a fuller potential. Rodriguez helps to put a lot of this into perspective from his own personal experiences, when discussing the ideas of learning in a bilingual setting he says “So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality.”

I don’t really know how I feel about a lot of these issues. Where I feel that it is important to learn the language of the country you belong to so it is easier to fit into society, especially in this country, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to lose your “private individuality” as Rodriguez would put it at least from my personal experience. Both my mother and father are from overseas, my mother came from Regensburg Bavaria to New York during the 50s. My father came from Ireland to Rhode Island during the 80s. My mother and the rest of my family from her side forced themselves to speak English because they wanted to assimilate into the culture quickly. The reason they forced themselves to do this was because the fact they spoke German caused them to stick out quickly and since the end of World War II wasn’t too long ago they were singled out and slandered by a large number of Americans. This caused my mother and aunt, who stayed in America while the rest of my family returned to Germany years later, to forget a majority of the German that they were raised with.

My father interestingly was fluent in Gaelic for a long time, which is a form of language in Ireland that hasn’t been practiced for a long time until recently where the Irish government has been reinstituting it into the curriculum there. He now has forgotten a good amount of it, when I ask him why he never taught me the language he simply stated “Why would I? You’d have no one to speak it to.” I would become increasingly frustrated when my mother would give me the same excuse when I asked her why she wouldn’t raise me bilingual in German. But the situation was a little different for my mother, since she was pretty much forced to stop speaking German at a young age.

The fact that I wasn’t raised in a bilingual family is very frustrating to me. I tend to take pride in being the first generation to be born in America on both sides of my family and I wish I had something to show for that. When I hear people walking next to me speaking German I always do what Rodriguez talked about, I always turn around and smile at them. I can catch some words and understand a bit of it, I have my Aunt Ellen to thank for that, she returned to America from Bavaria when my mother was a little older, my mother and her two sisters did their best to keep a bit of the German existent in the family. I learned a few words here and there because whenever my family was together my mother and aunts would switch from English to German when they didn’t want us to hear some conversations, this is also something that Rodriguez talked about, German, for my family, was the private language.

Whereas I understand the importance of my mother’s side learning English to assimilate into the culture, I can’t help but feel a bit cheated by the idea of loosing that aspect of your culture. Collier talks about not losing touch with being able to speak two languages, I think that should be stressed more, it’s very important to me personally. For example, I’ve heard so many white people talk about how mad they get when people don’t speak English, I share the same sentiment with that group of whites, but I am not mad for the same reasons they are, I am mad BECAUSE other people can speak the language of their culture and heritage but I cannot. But I can’t blame my parents for this, I understand now as I am older about the importance of assimilation and how much this country stresses it from my own family’s background. But I personally think that a stress of learning English and the codes of power through language is essential, but people should not be forced to forget their own language, it’s a part of their own personal identity, and that’s just as important as their public identity.