Thursday, September 01, 2011

Accent? Bad Grammar? No Problemo

In Arizona, teachers who teach English-immersion classes don't have to speak English very well. Seriously.
It's not how you speak English – it's about whether you know it at all.

That was the final word out of Arizona, where the state and two federal agencies reached a settlement over an allegation that the state was discriminating against teachers who may have thick accents or use bad grammar when teaching English-immersion classes.

The Arizona Capitol Times reports that the settlement reached by the state Department of Education will have the state consider only whether teachers are fluent, not how they speak the language.
A-freakin'-mazing. In what other field....

2 comments:

pseudotsuga said...

My mind just boggled...a Liberal Arts degree is getting more liberal and less arty as time goes by. Back to the Quadrivium, I say!

Anonymous said...

Ed schools -and most state tests - don't demand that ECE and ES teachers have substantive knowledge of mathematics, phonics, grammar, science, history or geography, so this is just more of the same.