Schools must make English necessary

At my child's public elementary school, they have something called the "ABC Countdown," used as a fun way of counting down the last days of the school year.

They use all of the letters of the alphabet and choose an activity that begins with the letter for that particular day.

This year in the 4th grade classes, when they got to the day for the letter "S," it was Spanish day.

The activities were that all of the children had to learn Spanish words. For those children who only spoke English, they were separated into a group and had to work on the basic words while the Spanish-speaking children were able to move on to other fun activities since they already knew the basic words.

Forcing a language other than English on my child is a decision that seems discriminatory to me.

Learning about different world cultures is always part of any regular school curriculum.

Part of those lessons might be learning what particular words in a different language mean and that is understandable.

However, it does not seem fine for all school newsletters coming home to include translation of any kind, let alone only Spanish translations.

It is not OK that when calling my child's public school, it is necessary to press 1 for English.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time volunteering in the classrooms at the school.

In addition to Spanish students, we also have students who have immigrated here from European, Asian and African countries and English is not the primary language spoken in these student's homes.

For many of them, it is a struggle when they begin school here but somehow their parents make sure that they are getting the exposure they need to English to assimilate into American culture, the melting pot.

There are Spanish-speaking families who also work hard to make sure that they and their children learn English.

However, there are plenty who don't because it has been made unnecessary to speak English in many instances.

I see no justification whatsoever for the pandering to the Spanish-speaking population in this country.

It would be interesting to see how the illegal immigration numbers might change if our country stopped making it unnecessary to speak English.

Sarah Fallon

Palatine