I honestly don’t know if making English the only official language is the best way to go. I do think that a common language has a greater chance to unite communities. English spoken by the majority of people is meant (in theory, not always the case) to give all inhabitants a voice. In the Bill of rights’ amendment, the freedoms of speech, is guaranteed to all so that people can participate in political and social decisions making regarding issues that affects their daily lives.
I fully support educational programs which would enable non native speakers to proficiently learn the language of the dominant bloc. This would integrate people in all levels of social matters, which would in turn increase mutual understanding of opinions and values. Providing printed material and translators to speakers a foreign language should be offered since the U.S. is and has always been a country of immigrants.
One of the questions discussed in class was “Should we spend money to teach people to speak English?” According to Wikipedia.org, the President’s budget for 2007 is $2.8 trillion and we spend about 89, 9 billion on education and training. Perhaps we could take a closer look at the nation’s spending to determine how much can be spend on educating those of us that do not speak English and yet pay their taxes. This “money pool” where we all put our money in should provide all of us with access to education tailored to each one’s needs.
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That is very interesting how much money the U.S. spends on educating and training. I beleive that area should be taken a closer look. I think those people that dont speak english would benefit from it as well as people that do speak english. The only question that I would strike, is would these people learn the language even if these programs were available?
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