Evidently these school administrators took their education courses at a different university than I did.  We learned early on that there are many ways to say one word (ex. dog) and that is before you take in regional or foreign vocal patterns.  Kids do just fine.  Evidently while missng some education classes the Superintendent missed the fact that most kids do not come with his prejudices.  They do not see an accent as detrimental to learning.  I can name at least 3 hispanic-background individuals who have accents but whose written and grammatical spoken English is better than that of many teachers in the area.  I have an 11 letter last name.  A Superintendent once asked me in an interview how I ever expected kids to say that name.  I advised him the kids did not have his prejudice regarding names and that if he had bothered to check the roster of his students he would find many of them had names just as long and difficult to pronounce.  Needless to say I did not get that job! People always find justifications for their prejudices.  That is why these same people must have scapegoats.

Does anyone posting here realize that there’s scientific research out there on this?
Millions of dollars every year spend by the government on research, and all for
naught; Americans don’t seem to realize that there’s this thing called science. The
science is pretty clear: Accents don’t matter. Nor does moderately ungrammatical
speech. Students get use to it, and if they aren’t bound and determined *not* to
understand (which is commonly the problem), then they’ll learn just fine. See the
research by Tracey Derwing and Murray Munro. It’s sad how legislators can just
ignore science completely. Now THAT should be illegal.

Teaching English, as a first language or only language can not be taught by people who have a heavy accent, even if that is just a real heavy hill billy accent. The fact is most people who are accredited to teach English, even though they may have a barbarous and home grown speech peculiarity will with education have a command of good standard English.

So the question is are the people in Arizona being too exculsive, or have encompetent English teachers become a problem? Surely a person teaching basic English would be incompetent to their job if they have a really, really strong accent, even an ignorance of proper usage.

On the other hand if the teacher is teaching literature and is not difficult to understand and has the prescribed knowledge of English Literature than it might be fair to ask is accent a complete disqualification?

Let us focus this whole thing on illegals, as just that. It is illegal to break into a persons home and take up residence in a spare room or any room It is illegal to break into a country and make it your residence. It is in fact a hostile act and illegal too.

If we really need extra labor than surely the best option is to offer legal entry in balance with labor demand, but we are not obligated to have open borders, as that is matter of National Security and it is made worse by the wrong headed approach we have adopted in which our historic population is being forced to pay to encourage foreign residents to continue to do their business in the language of origin, to not become loyal American’s. to require special government officials speaking a multitude of languages, when in fact it is the Foreign residents responsibilty to learn the language or find some one to transalate for them, not the rest of us.

I should not be surprised if some of Arizona’s motives are less than pure, but over and over we have been told by our government that they will control the borders and then for the sake of a one time minority voting block they have ignored the issue. That isn’t right either. It is stacking the deck.

@Carl
Your claim about immigrants driving down wages is true. But only because immigrants are relegated to a second-class status in our labor force, and that’s assuming they’re allowed to be legal.

What makes jobs ours or theirs? Why does citizenship comport the right to feed one’s family?

Perhaps the biggest irony of the controversy over immigration is that one of the primary reasons there has been such an increase in immigration to the states across the mexican border in recent years is because American capital successfully destroyed the economy of many Central American, South American, and Carribean countries through NAFTA, and a myriad of other neo-liberal policies masquerading as ‘development’.

Maybe the bigger irony is that many of the ‘immigrants’ have indigenous roots whose civilizations predate any western immigration to the Americas by thousands of years.

THE STEAM ROLLER IS BEGINNIG & ALL THE NICETIES THAT WERE USED TO
JUSTIFY ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WILL BE ASHES IN THE MOUTHS OF THE
BABBLERS—HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS.

The true purpose of the Arizona anti-immigration law may be to purge Hispanics from voter lists:
http://www.gregpalast.com