Change. Things are changing. Some of these are unhappy changes, and in many ways the world seems to be falling apart. The whole mood is that we have been much more than we ever will be again.

The incoming president promises change as well. The change of progress to counteract the change of decay. We expect that he and his administration will change things as diverse as health care and the conduct of war. We expect more people than in two generations to receive employment from government work programs. Many things will change.

But if this is all that happens—acknowledgment and then reluctant acceptance that the world and its things have changed around us—then nothing, really, has changed at all. If we remain the same, then all of the chaos and churn swirling around us will be repeated over and over in an unending cycle. Working to change our world is necessary but not sufficient; if we want that change to last, then we must change as well.

In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius opines that those who rely on the caprice of Fortune have no peace. It is only those who allow themselves to learn from Philosophy, or wisdom, who can ride out the storms of life with tranquility. As great and powerful as we think we are as civilizations and nations and individuals, we would be unforgivably arrogant to believe we can really control the world around us. The screams of traders as they watch fortunes in paper vanish in seconds; the troubled faces of presidents, bankers, and bureaucrats using policies to glue pieces of sky back in place before they fall; the dark humor of new graduates facing a hostile job market: are these people really in control? No. Not of things. They—we—influence our environment, but ultimately it is what’s going on inside of our hearts and minds and souls that is ours to order and direct. We should all ponder this as we fall Icarus-like from the heights of our conceit. And, once we land, let us remember it before we try to build any more towers to heaven.

So let the markets fall and the sky with it. And amidst the collapse, may the illusion of control crumble and give way to humility. Let us not love our own prosperity, but instead love our neighbor. And perhaps amidst all of this unwelcome change, as familiar things disappear and old ways are lost, we will find something we’ve long since ceased to know: ourselves.

See this link about English immersion education programs. English immersion sounds like something that foreigners do when they want to learn English fast. That’s something such a system is good for. However, at least in California, English immersion is in essence a rejection of bilingual education. Now, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe California’s bilingual education programs were sufficiently flawed as to be worse than English-only. But English immersion to me represents foolishness combined with arrogance.

Foolishness

A better system in many regards is two-way or bilingual immersion. In such a program, children from their youngest years are taught in both the dominant language (English) and a minority language (usually Spanish, though French, German, and Japanese are seen). They receive language instruction—in other words, grammar, composition, literature, speaking and presentation skills—in both languages. As the theory goes, this produces students competent in both languages.

English immersion, as I understand it, is essentially two-way immersion chopped in half, yielding—okay, do the math—one-way immersion! So it means “English only.” The article I linked to above claims that this results in improved English proficiency (likely true) while usually still maintaining the minority language at home. This last point is the tricky one. Yes, many students will continue to communicate with their families in the minority language. But no, this is not equivalent to receiving an education in/on that language. As far as being useful in the workforce, it will suffice for blue collar jobs and nothing more. Do latino immigrants not deserve a chance at reaching higher than that? English immersion sacrifices rather than develops the native language of immigrant students. While English is arguably the most important language to have mastery over in this country, it is foolishness to cast aside easily-developed native-language resources. In refusing to educate elementary-age students in Spanish, we increase the amount of work required later on: ten years down the road they will have to learn a “foreign” language in high school and, instead of learning a third language, they will most likely spend time solidifying their command of their native language (easy A’s). We could have taken care of that in elementary school!

Arrogance

There are many children who continue to be able to communicate at a rudimentary level in Spanish while primarily developing English skills. However, unless they begin learning English at a very young age it will never be like a native language to them. And so they have a complete, native mastery of no languages at all. How demeaning! Most native English speakers in the United States would never bother to imagine what it’s like to primarily speak a marginalized tongue. Some students develop a sort of lingua-cultural self-loathing because they see that their language and culture are regarded as inferior. Now, maybe I’m leaning a little too much towards the fluffy “let’s celebrate all cultures, flower power” philosophy… but, well, maybe a little of that would be appropriate. The greater crime is to raise generation after generation of immigrants with a notion that they must assimilate completely and pretend that their native culture doesn’t exist. If that idea had prevailed during previous waves of immigration we might have lost such cultural gems as bagels, pizza, and polka 😉 And do we think that American culture is so all-encompassingly awesome that we have nothing to learn from those who come to our country? What if from the latinos we learned something about strength of family? What if from the asians something about hard work in school? Or from the polynesians how to relax a bit and roast pigs underground? Along with that, there are surely many things that immigrants can learn from our culture, and there are economic benefits not only for them but for their families back in Latin America, to whom they send substantial support money (aka remittances).

The end. Fin. Конец. Terminus.