Transcript
John Phillip Santos
Writer/Producer
I don't think that I have ever heard a first lady endorse the idea, the goals of bilingual education--and a Republican first lady. But in fact, the Republican Party has just announced that they are preparing a television show that they are going to create particularly to address the concerns of the Latino community, in Spanish. But if I could just take one moment to quarrel with a little bit of how we have discussed questions related to bilingual education. While it is true that English is a language of success, it is a global language now, I don't want to think about bilingual education or trilingual education, quadrilingual education exclusively in terms of economic success. Part of the testimonio that we offer as Latinos is to bring goals in terms of the way we live our lives that go beyond just economic success. We want to maintain our spiritual values, we want to maintain a sense of connectedness to our ancient histories, and we want to bring the richness of our culture into the public dialogue in the United States. It's not just about becoming successful, suburban, bourgeois Americans, but that we want to enjoy economic success that allows us to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on our societies, to reflect on our spiritual values. I think if we embrace superficial economic goals exclusively, we do that at the cost of, really, what makes us unique.
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