Speak English or Die

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month.

Well, not everyone is celebrating in the same way. I'm assuming these folks in Danbury CT, site of the recent "Danbury 11" protests, are not so keen on it.

Don't worry, Danbury. A recent study by Douglas Massey of the Woodrow Wilson School, along with Rubén Rumbaut and Frank Bean from the University of California-Irvine, concludes that Spanish is not actually winning the language wars. Not even in South Texas or Southern California, where the largest concentrations of Hispanics live.

The study finds that by the third generation only 17 percent of children of Mexican immigrants can speak Spanish fluently. By the fourth generation, it drops to just 5 percent. So it appears that we're not really holding onto our native language much at all. Just as the German immigrants a century ago gradually gave up their native tongue for English too. Despite the half a million elementary school kids who went to bilingual German-English schools at that time and the absence of any English-only legislation, English managed to survive.

Make no mistake. The bilingual education debate is complicated for good reasons. But the benefits of teaching and learning more than just English in our schools are well documented and simply undeniable. Unfortunately, the unfounded fears of people who speak only English, and related conspiracy theories about Atzlan, get in the way of productive solutions.

And certainly put a damper on an otherwise month full of great celebrations.