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While the crescendo of the "English only" debate fills statehouses, town halls, think tanks and living rooms across America, one has to wonder if Massachusetts Education Board guru and chairman John Silber suffers from a hearing loss. This former Boston University-president-turned-failed-political-candidate-turned-bureaucrat is still clutching one piece of baggage with a huge "Academia" sticker on it.
That bag holds the arrogance and nose-thumbing elitism prerequisite for heads of major academic institutions. Presidents and chancellors are allowed, even encouraged, to spend other people's money any way they wish. Few question their motives or wisdom. Flattered trustees bow to their outbursts. Parents tremble and fork over contributions they cannot afford for fear or reprisals against their offspring. And alumni follow dizzily, blinded by the constant reinforcement of a message that they owe all to their alma mater.
Not so with the increasing majority of taxpayers who see no logical reason why English should not be the official language of America's government. Faced with increasing fiscal belt-tightening in the area of education, parents and grandparents have sat quietly in a corner while their children were fed ketchup as a vegetable by President Reagan, and now fear that President Clinton will gut education budgets even further by pandering to Hispanics and others who argue for the preservation and increase in bilingual educational programs in our schools.
The argument that "our parents and grandparents learned English; so can they" seems insensitive at times. At the very least, it is simplistic given the complications of today's world and the wide variety of immigrants coming here now versus those, primarily Europeans, coming to America in the great waves early in this century. But there is some value in stressing that English is our only unifying tool as a rainbow nation. If we cannot speak to each other, we shall never recognize our commonalities nor resolve our differences.
For all these reasons, and because of the depth of feeling on both sides of this debate, it is shocking to learn that John Silber wants to lead the Board of Education down a path, at the end of which sits a new charter school where the official language will be not English, but French! He supports a Lycee Francais in the Bay State, to accommodate foreign business people living here temporarily so that their children can have the European education their parents desire for them! This school will offer the baccalaureate -- not a diploma -- all on the taxpayers' tab.
This development shows that Dr. Silber is not only out of touch with the public school debate in Massachusetts and across this nation, but that he still holds on fiercely to the paternalism usually associated with academia. He, apparently, knows what is best for all of us and will see to it that we knuckle under despite kicking and screaming from those who pay his salary.
More importantly, and more dangerously, this French Lyceum proposal speaks to a thinly-veiled elitism bordering on fascism. While the board argues that the French public school would be "good for foreign business," they hope none of us will notice the lack of proposals for a public Spanish Academy or a public Chinese High School despite the amount of business we do with countries where those languages are spoken.
The kindest assumption taxpayers can make is that the French proposal got Dr. Silber's attention because in his ivy-covered mind French is the refined language of diplomacy and culture, while Spanish and Chinese are the tongues of the barrios and restaurant kitchens.
Affluent Europeans living across America already enjoy many privileges and freedoms charged to the American taxpayer. To extend to their children an educational advantage, at the same time that immigrant and refugee children are being told to speak English or go home, is educationally and morally absurd.
Both Rhode Island and New York have French high schools, private institutions in both cases, where parents from across the sea can pay up to $12,000 annually so that their tots can avoid rubbing elbows with the likes of kids from urban neighborhoods or working class suburbs. If this private option meets their Gallic needs and sense of separatism, so be it.
But the Massachusetts taxpayers who work hard every day in factories and small businesses, who struggle to learn English and who pay their taxes hoping for a better life for their children in ever-struggling public schools, do not need and should not tolerate the additional fiscal burden -- or moral insult -- the French charter school proposes.
Mary Ann Sorrentino hosts a daily talk show on WPRO-AM 630 in Providence, on the World Wide Web at www.wpro.com
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