Chronology of Events, Court Decisions, and Legislation Affecting Language Minority Children in American Public Education. pg 87-"Tong Tied"

Text: "Tongue Tied"

Chronology of Events, Court Decisions, and Legislation Affecting Language Minority Children in American Public Education. pg 87-"Tong Tied"

I have been working in the school system and I always have heard that education assessment is not very fair for minority students. Most of the time, teachers see students who speak a different language as a problem because the students’ lack of understanding causes a teacher to do a poor evaluation, and sometimes that evaluation does not reflect the students’ abilities and capabilities to learn.. After reading “Tongue Tied” by Otto Santa Ana (2004), I realized that this problem is not a new one- it has existed for many years. Using the American system as an example, Santa Anna mentioned three major ethnic groups who suffered an unfair education for so many years. One of them is Native Americans, who started to see changes in the 1930’s. The second group who also faced many obstacles is African-Americans. Before the Civil War, for instance, it was illegal in the South to teach slaves how to read. In the mid-20th century, desegregation became a hotly debated issue. The last group that also faced obstacles in education is Latinos (Puerto Rico and Chicanos).

Critical Response 

Read and review three major groups of language minority students who continue to be negatively affected by U.S. public school policy. 

African American

Reflect and summaries on key years where growth was starting to take place. 

In the book “Tied Tongue”, Santa Ana mentioned three major groups of minority students who continue to be negatively affected by U.S. public school policy. He mentioned American Indians, African-Americans and Latinos. According to Santa Ana, American Indians, from the very beginning of America's schools, were forced to learn only English in school so that they would adopt the Anglo-American way and customs. Back then they thought the “savage” American Indians could be “civilized”; they had no culture of their own, according to the European and American settlers. For 250 years, Native Americans endured English-only teaching in American schools. African-Americans had a more difficult time because they were slaves, and at that time slaves could not be educated in many states. Even after the Civil War, when the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1868, many states had Jim Crow laws that denied African-Americans their rights to many things, including a fair education. Latinos also faced many obstacles; for instance, they could never become a teacher because of their Spanish accent. Even though many years have passed and many things have improved, the fight for a better education continues to be a problem; however, there are noticeable improvements. Santa Ana mentions how the “No Child Left Behind" Act of 2002 created legislation that, for the first time, gave priority to the brief teaching of English instead of long-term English instruction. I see it as the creation of a new class for students, who do not enjoy the extra school work.