Letters to the Editor

Shirley Ballard
Denver

Cool aid:Remember when the restaurant critic used to critique restaurants? Wasn't that cool?

Katanna Conley
Boulder

The English are coming: In his August 15 letter, Kevin Kelley criticizes Westword for making an unfair attack on the English-only movement (Julie Dunn's August 1 "What's in a Name?"), but then he turns around and makes his own unfair attack on the bilingual-education movement. This movement is hardly a conspiracy by the much-maligned teacher unions. Unions do protect some inflated salaries and unnecessary jobs, but mainly those of white, liberal-arts teachers with years of teaching experience and no marketable skills. On the other hand, there is such a high demand for and low supply of bilingual educators in the U.S. that these educators would actually make more money and have more jobs if they weren't restricted by the unions' collective bargaining and teacher-licensure requirements.

The demand for bilingual education originates not from the unions or the Democratic Party, but from millions of Hispanic parents. Conservatives in California a few years ago supported a number of English-only and anti-bilingual education laws and, as a result, the xenophobic California Republican Party may never win another general election in this heavily Hispanic state. To say all this support is simply because the Hispanic community has somehow been fooled by the white, liberal teacher unions is not just wrong; it's borderline racist.

The real issue is whether bilingual or English-only education is better for children. The research on this is still unclear, unfortunately. So in the meantime, maybe we should defer to the opinion of the vast majority of Hispanic parents rather than the xenophobic reactionaries.

A.L. Ellis
Denver