English would get even worse

Your article about kids becoming bilingual has a huge flaw in it. Would you wax a dirt floor? The dirt floor is not conducive to benefiting from being waxed. In fact the dirt floor would become in worse shape than before.

Today’s average youngster is not decent with even the English language. Possibly partially affected by the lousy language they learn while texting.

The big reason is they are really not interested in learning the written language they were born into, let alone learning a language of a people that are across the border, leading to even worse American English among our high school graduates.

The big talk to teach bilingual is a ploy to take our attention off problems in our schools that are not helping our kids get a basic education.

An example is Lebanon with a grant from the Gates Foundation to break their high school into separate schools, called academies, losing all the benefits of a large school and causing all sorts of hate and discontent.

Bilingual education for the average student is a no-no and should not be pushed.

Only when needed or when the student is really interested should bilingual be allowed prior to high school, and then only as an elective. Have you heard the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you can not make the horse drink”? It applies here.

Not everybody loves learning a language, same with math, science, mechanics, art, etc.

Leave the miscellaneous stuff out and get back to teaching the missing three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) before expecting our youngsters to learn some foreign language they are not interested in.

If a person does not know the basics of education their future is very restricted.

Alonzo E. Fuller, Sweet Home

Solution to the mess

Re. the lady who said (D-H, April 19) that I wrote that Republicans hate Democrats: Not true. (Sorry to be so late in replying, but the editor has his rules.) Here is an exact quote from my letter: “Republicans and conservatives hate FDR and his safety nets for the common people’s good.”

That is the truth; I’ve never seen an article or book on the subject that didn’t confirm that the Republicans hated FDR. Republicans are still trying to, and succeeding in, overturning all of FDR’s safeguards that rescued this country from the Great Depression.

We are in another mess now. As Mr. Allan Jay Silver so ably wrote in the May 26 D-H, “It is essential that Democrats be placed in Congress and a Democrat placed in The White House.”

Mary Brock, Albany