{"id":675,"date":"2006-10-06T07:47:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-06T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-our-bilingual-or-not-state\/"},"modified":"2006-10-06T07:47:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-06T13:47:00","slug":"dendahl-on-our-bilingual-or-not-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/dendahl-on-our-bilingual-or-not-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Dendahl on our bilingual (or not) state"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to a debate with Republican challenger John Dendahl, so here is Dendahl\u2019s stance on whether the state is officially bilingual, taken from his Web site<\/a>. It was originally published in the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> on May 6, 2006. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

N. M. Constitution Backs Bilingual \u2014 To a Point<\/span>
By John Dendahl<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cAlbuquerque Mayor Martin Ch\u00e1vez needs remedial training in New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> history and constitutional law.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>\u201cAlong with the many audacious claims of \u2018rights\u2019 for the flood of migrants illegally in the United States, the reconquerors have written something they purport to be our national anthem in Spanish. Ch\u00e1vez reportedly thinks this is terrific.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn a confused moment, Ch\u00e1vez also got singing confused with hand signs. \u2018Friday night, at the tricentennial ball, there was a lovely Native American who gave a rendition of the national anthem in Native American sign language,\u2019 he said. \u2018I thought it was beautiful.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cSigning the meaning of a song is not singing some attempt at translation.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEven the master panderer, Gov. Bill Richardson, agreed with President Bush that the U.S.<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place> national anthem should be sung in English.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cCh\u00e1vez\u2019s response to that is what revealed his ignorance of history. One report had it, \u2018In fact,\u2019 he pointed out, \u2018New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place> was admitted into the nation as a bilingual state. Whether the president likes the history of New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> or not, he doesn\u2019t get to change our constitution,\u2019 Ch\u00e1vez said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo the contrary, New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place> was admitted into the union with a commitment to become English-speaking, not bilingual. Those who wrote the state constitution in 1910 recognized the significant population fraction that spoke only Spanish. They were careful to provide for these Spanish speakers reasonable times and educational opportunities for the transition to English.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI wrote a column about this in late 2003. Much of what follows is repeated on account of its having again become an important topic of public discussion.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTake Article XX, Section 12, which required (note past tense) that \u2018…all laws passed by the legislature shall be published in both the English and Spanish languages …\u2019 Sounds pretty bilingual to me. However, the first 11 words of that section are, \u2018For the first twenty years after this constitution goes into effect …\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cThus, the constitutional requirement for bilingual publication of laws expired in 1932, nearly 75 years ago. The sole remaining bilingual publication requirement applies to proposed constitutional amendments, which must be published in Spanish but only in each county where a newspaper is published in Spanish.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnother section frequently used to confuse is Article XII, Section 8, requiring the Legislature to provide for training teachers in \u2018both the English and Spanish languages.\u2019 However, the section also explains that the purpose of bilingual training of teachers is \u2018to qualify them to teach Spanish-speaking pupils and students.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSection 8 further obligates the Legislature to \u2018provide means and methods to facilitate the teaching of the English language and other branches of learning to (Spanish-speaking) pupils and students.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cPerhaps the blockbuster \u2014 one I\u2019d bet is violated daily in public schools throughout the state \u2014 is found in Article XXI, the Compact with the United States.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSection 4 reads, \u2018Provision shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools which shall be open to all the children of the state and free from sectarian control, and said schools shall always be conducted in English.\u2019 Not Spanish and not any other language(s).<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor centuries, people have been arriving in the United States<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place> unable to speak English. Most learned. Ability to read, speak and write English is a requirement to become a naturalized citizen.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFluency in more than one language is much to be admired, but English is the lingua franca of the United States<\/st1:country-region> and it is the lingua franca of New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>. I\u2019m sorry to rain on the parade of advocates who dislike this cultural fact of life but, after all, there are other places to live.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Bill Richardson has still not agreed to a debate with Republican challenger John Dendahl, so here is Dendahl\u2019s stance on whether the state is officially bilingual, taken from his Web site. It was originally published in the Albuquerque Journal on May 6, 2006. N. M. Constitution Backs Bilingual \u2014 To a PointBy John Dendahl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}