multilingual: not synonymous with "has no command of English."

[glass_icarus]

So today's post was going to be another poetry post, because I've got lots more of the pretty to share, but no. I am now too pissed off to do so.

I meant to post about Lori Phanachone last month, but I never got around to it. Lori is a Laotian-American, 3.9-GPA-wielding National Honors Society student who refused to take the English Language Development Assessment test because it was demeaning and racist. The reason she had to take it?

The school district's curriculum coordinator, Lori Porsche, said taking the test is mandatory because Phanachone indicated on her school registration that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Her parents are Laotian and still speak little English.

Phanachone, who was born in California and lived in upstate New York before moving to Storm Lake with her family in 2006, said she has never been enrolled in any English Language Learning or English as a Second Language program.

"Someone told me I should have put English as my first language when I registered for school," Phanachone said. "But I refused. I will not deny who I am. And I will not disrespect my culture or my mother."

Well. Despite the school district's claims when working with AALDEF, who is representing Lori, that her scholarships and National Honors Society membership would not be threatened by her protest, that NHS membership got revoked last Friday "due to her failure to maintain 'standards of scholarship, leadership, service and character[.]'"

Are you fucking kidding me? That girl could have been me. Lori Phanachone worked hard for years to get to where she is, just like any number of high school students, and her academic future is being threatened because she had the balls to stand up and say "No, that's racist. No, I won't play your games by your rules, because they are unfair." Post-racial society, my fucking ass.

Comments

[rudhampaiel.livejournal.com]

Jeebus. That's absurd.

...what on earth does the ELDA test even have to do with NHS?

The stupid/racism, it boggles.


Lori Porsche - on a power trip much?

[rudhampaiel.livejournal.com]

Okay, and I just read through the article - I can't believe they suspended her. You always forget about how little agency high school students have once you're out of high school.

If the test is intended to gauge one's mastery of English, it should be given to all students, no matter what their first language is. My mom has fourth graders who still can't tell the difference between a verb and a noun, let alone glean very much from a story excerpt or whatever.

[whymzycal.livejournal.com]

I don't even know what to say to that. I don't even know what to say about the test in general other than "WTF?"

Sometimes I am very, very disappointed in the educational system of this country. We worry about all the wrong things.

[avendya.livejournal.com]

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

I'm sorry, I have no words.

[rhombal.livejournal.com]

Those articles make me so furious.

Lately, everyone's been talking about acceptance and how society's making progress - but it seems like we still have quite a bit to go.

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that's terrible. I'm so impressed that she's brave enough to fight it even with all the (incredibly unfair) consequences.

[such_heights]

Dear God, I'd read about this while back, but I had no idea she'd been so badly fucked over.

[woldy]

Oh, FFS. I really don't understand how 'first language' has been treated as equivalent to 'only language in which you are presumed fluent' - I've marked plenty of semi-illiterate papers from students who spoke English as a first language and a bunch of fantastic, eloquent papers from students for whom English was a second or subsequent language. What other excuses will people come up with to protect the privilege of lazy, middle-class white kids against people who work harder than them?

Since you haven't posted a poem I'm going to be terribly cheeky and add one here (even though I can't seem to get the formatting right). It's a poem of Rita Wong's that I love and I think it's appropriate for the topic of the post.

write around the absence, she said, show
its existence this is
demonstrate the sound of
its contours my chinese tongue
how it whispering: nei tou
tastes gnaw ma? no
where tones can
its edges survive this
fall hard alphabet
on my stuttering tongue, how its tones &
pictograms get flattened out by the
steamroller of the english language,
live its etymology of
half-submerged assimilation
in the salty home of tramples budding
my mother tongue memory into sawdust
shallows stereotypes, regimented capitals
arrogant nouns & more nouns, punctuated
by subservient descriptors. grammar is the dust on the streets
waiting to be washed off by immigrant cleaners or blown into your eyes
by the wind. grammar is the invisible net in the air, holding your
words in place. grammar, like wealth, belongs in the hands of
the people who produce it.

(untitled poem from Rita Wong's book Monkeypuzzle)

[bonjovial.livejournal.com]

That is really... ridiculous. Revoking her NHS membership really was going too far. I'm glad that she is getting the (albeit limited) publicity that AALDEF can provide -- it's really unfair that she has to go through all this crap. I don't know how much we can hope for something to happen, though, huh.

[riverlight.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to this. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. God. Times like this I despair, I swear. What can we do when things like this happen? (Rhetorical question, really.) Just—ARGH.

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

WORLD.
WHY.
SERIOUSLY, WHY.

:(

Thank you for mentioning, this, though. It's awful, but it's the kind of thing that needs to be mentioned. ♥