CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico – It isn’t perfect English, but pretty darn close. Spoken in unison, the words flow effortlessly from a group of smiling students. So does their message.
“English is important to me,” said 11-year-old Silvia Alejandra Briseño, “because it means more opportunities and better communication when I grow up. Hopefully a better job, too, here or there in Texas.”
Her bilingual teacher, 36-year-old Mary Lou Tamez, said: “English is critical, especially when you realize who our neighbors are, Texans.”
Without fanfare but with great hopes, the state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, has declared itself the first bilingual state in Mexico. It has decided that its 320,000 public school students, from elementary to high school, will learn conversational English.
State authorities say the pilot program will break down language barriers and create opportunities. They see Tamaulipas as a giant laboratory.
“Our efforts are aimed at preparing students for a more competitive world filled with technology and English,” Gov. Eugenio Hernández said at a ceremony last month formally inaugurating the program. “Let’s face it. The world speaks English. And even if you can only speak a little, you can defend yourself and compete.”
Big experiment
The Tamaulipas effort is one of several under way in Mexico – from Mexico City to the Texas border states of Chihuahua and Nuevo León – to teach English to students and business leaders. Tamaulipas, however, represents the biggest experiment.
One of four Mexican states abutting Texas, Tamaulipas shares a long border with the Lone Star State. Annually, millions cross the border on foot or by car to shop, work or play. More than 50 percent of all U.S.-Mexico trade crosses through Tamaulipas and Texas.
The top industries are agriculture, foreign-owned manufacturing companies, fishing, ports and petrochemicals. Because of its geography and proximity to Texas, the state also has long been a magnet to drug traffickers and to the violence they unleash.
Resort destination
Hernández and the federal government are injecting millions of dollars to build up the state’s infrastructure along the Gulf Coast in hopes of turning the area into a beach gateway for Americans who either want to visit or live.
“We have the tools and resources to rival Padre Island,” he said, referring to the South Texas resort island popular with both Americans and Mexicans.
To serve those potential American tourists, Hernández and educators say, Tamaulipas students must learn English. Hernández said he hopes the classes will become a permanent part of the school curriculum by fall semester. He’s working with the teachers’ union to hire the teachers permanently.
James Taylor, a Texan who grew up here in Ciudad Victoria and is now a political consultant for Austin-based Vianovo, said the goal is to start the students young “to get them [to] focus on the importance of speaking two languages.”
“Because of our geographical location and history, English is key in the daily interaction with Texas,” Taylor said.
His mother, Maggie Taylor, is a supporter of Hernández’s efforts. She served as a translator for then-Tamaulipas Gov. Praxedis Balboa when he hosted Texas Gov. John B. Connally in 1964.
“My mother never lost the importance of learning to speak two languages and navigating two cultures,” Taylor said. “That’s certainly been a key element to the successes I’ve had and to the relationships that I’ve been able to establish on both sides of the border.”
A bilingual Texas?
On his last visit to Tamaulipas as U.S. ambassador, Tony Garza, a native of neighboring Brownsville, appeared in mid-January with Hernández and Taylor at Leona Vicario Primary School, one of the pilot schools in the bilingual program. About 1,200 students, teachers, parents and mayors from throughout the state came out to show off what some called “the laboratory of the future.”
Two students gave Garza an overview of the pilot program in both Spanish and English. When Garza, a former Texas railroad commissioner, addressed the crowd, he began in Spanish and then switched to his language of comfort, English, saying half-jokingly, “When I was growing up, we didn’t have a program like this one.”
Tamez, the teacher, whose mother is from Alabama, suggested that Texas should also become a bilingual state “to ease communication among neighbors and friends.”
Garza, who plans to split his time between Dallas and Mexico City, later said he was impressed with the program and suggested a similar effort in Texas to teach students not just Spanish, but English, too. Garza said Texas is home to an estimated 800,000 children with limited English proficiency. They come not just from Mexico but also from places like South Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East.
“I think the focus in our state needs to be on giving Texas schoolchildren what they need to compete, and that’s English,” he said. “And then allow for a robust program in languages that provides English speakers the opportunity to learn a second language, and my guess is for many that would be Spanish.”
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News
Leave it up to the opposition to take a minor point and run it up the pole until it becomes a major problem. Such is the case with the “English Proficiency Requirement” brought up by that silly little man, Byron Leslie Dorgan, in the Capitol Hill ambush of Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters. Let’s call him “Leslie”! That is such a manly and Senatorial sounding name!
CVSA Inspector guidelines state:
“In recognition of the three countries’ language differences, it is the responsibility of the driver and the motor carrier to be able to communicate in the country in which the driver/carrier is operating so that safety is not compromised. Driver is unable to communicate sufficiently to understand and respond to official inquiries and directions. Place driver out of service.”
So how do we determine the level of “proficiency” so that safety is not compromised? They leave that to the individual inspectors discretion.
What “Leslie” Dorgan tried to prevent Mary Peters from explaining about the English proficiency test is that the traffic control sign test is administered AFTER the primary English test in which the inspector asks questions in English to which the driver is expected to reply in kind.
Peters acknowledged that during border inspections, Mexican drivers are allowed to use any language that a U.S. inspector understands when answering questions to prove they recognize U.S. signs.
But she added that inspectors determine English proficiency through other questions, such as asking a driver’s name, what the truck is carrying and its destination.
“The inspector has a conversation with the driver,” Peters said.
Calvin L. Scovel III, the Transportation Department’s inspector general, told the panel that the road-sign quiz is “but one component of the English-language proficiency test.”
“This was one factor among others that the inspector could consider in determining whether a Mexican driver has English-language proficiency,” said Scovell
William Quade, associate administrator at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said Mexican truck drivers are not asked to identify signs until they have demonstrated English proficiency.
“Our thinking was they’ve already established that they can communicate in English, and at some point in time we need to get on with the inspections,” Quade said after the hearing. “So we allow the inspection to continue in whatever language is appropriate that both the inspector and the driver understand.”
That’s simple enough and the facts that SenatorLeslie Dorgan did not want entered into the record.
So who the hell cares if they answer in English, Spanish or Spanglish? The point is that they understand the questions being posed to them in English. This shows a certain proficiency in the language.
Ever been in Laredo and heard the American “Professional” truckers, many of them OOIDA members, harassing the Mexican drivers on the CB? Do you think they don’t understand what the drivers are saying about their mamas and the suggestions they are making about their sisters? Sure they do and that is why they respond in SPANISH! That is a form of English proficiency.
Traffic signs are universal, in shape and color. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine what they mean.
Like Secretary Peters, I too, have driven extensively in Mexico. My proficiency in speaking Spanish is laughable. I can read the language well and I have had absolutely no problem navigating the country whereever my wonderings take me. Common sense and logic.
But the opposition will continue to beat this horse like they beat their meat, until it’s dead or until each and every Mexican trucker who enters this country speaks perfect Oxford English, or until pigs fly.
And a little known factoid is that in Mexican schools, English is a required course from grade six on until graduation. It is not elective, it is required. People can comprehend when they want to but are embarrassed to speak it because of the fear of being made fun of. And there are no shortage of American drivers willing to make fun and ridicule them.
And consider the hundreds of thousands of Mexican tourists who legally visit this country each year. Most don’t speak English but are able to arrive at their destinations and return safely and without incident.
As Willy Shakesphere commented so many years ago when asked about the Mexican trucker, “Mucho a dodo about nada”!
Texas Department of Public Safety Inspectors announced today their plans to cause a total disruption of border commerce in the Laredo sector
Texas DPS along with USDOT and FMCSA have been handing out pamphlets announcing their intentions of turning back at the border, any transfer driver who can not or will not respond to their questions in English.
Luis Brown Robert Sesma, president of the National Camera of the Motor transport de Carga (Canacar), expressed this week, his indignation of measures being announced, that the FMCSA and USDOT will take towards Mexican carriers.
“it is ridiculous to announce that they will put out of service the operators who do not speak English, it is understood when you go to the interior of the United States, but in the border region, to force them, that is not right”!
He added that according to a pamphlet which they are giving to Mexican shuttle drivers, that it is anticipated that ofnot responding in English to the personnel of the DPS, will cause them tobe put out of service and the operators and the carriers could be fined.
With nearly 5000 Mexican shuttle drivers operating in the area, it was determined by CANACAR representatives, that perhaps 2-3% speak English at a level of 30%.
FMCSA Regulation 391.11 (b)(2) specifies that commercial can read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.
We agree with this rule where it applies to the participants in the Cross Border Program and any other driver operating on the nations highways, but Mexico Trucker has a definite problem with the enforcement of the regulation in an area where English is realistically, a second language and 95% of the folks down here are bi-lingual.
This seems little more than harassment and a means to enhance the county coffers at the expense of these drivers who only make about $20 dollars per crossing.
We do things a little differently down here on the border and in the end, it all comes together and works smoothly and efficiently.
If this policy is enforced here, you can expect longer wait times for your trailers to cross the border, which means more idle time in the truck stops.
Let’s see, there are 5000 drivers, and only 3% speak acceptable English, that is 150 trucks to do the work of 5000.
Yep! ya’ll going be doing some sitting, measured days instead of hours!
Be careful what you wish for people! The repercussions ain’t nice!
CANACAR spokesman plan to complain to the Mexican government for relief. Mexico Trucker fully supports CANACAR this time and is in opposition to this incredibly stupid plan.
MEXICO CITY – As the debate over immigration reform festers in Congress, one message is clear: Americans think people from other countries who live in the United States ought to speak English.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it to a gathering of Latino journalists. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said it when he proposed a bill calling for the designation of English as the national language. Even President Bush said it as he lobbied for his immigration overhaul package.
“I think people who want to be a citizen of this country should learn English,” Bush said.
Now a Mexican television network is saying it, too. And the network, TV Azteca, is putting its money where its microphone is.
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