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Equal
Opportunity Satire On J. Goldberg From The Texas
Mercury
A Reader Notes That Hayek Worried About Immigrants
From:
Robin Corkery
Your excellent piece on the burden that
English Learners impose on
public education in the
United States illumines a problem that is rarely
discussed in the mainstream media. It also forces us to
think about the
advantage provided to the anti-assimilationists when
educators are
more or less permanently distracted by obstacles
that an irresponsible
immigration policy has placed in their path.
One
is reminded of
Friedrich Hayek's chapter on education in "The
Constitution of Liberty" in which he
says:
"It is important to
recognize that general education is not solely and
perhaps not even mainly, a matter of communicating knowledge. There is a need for certain common standards of
values, and, though too great emphasis on this need may
lead to very illiberal consequences, peaceful common
existence would be clearly impossible without any such
standards. If in long-settled communities with a
predominantly indigenous population, this is not likely
to be a serious problem, there are instances, such as
the United States during the
period of large immigration, where it may well be
one. That the United States would not have become such
an effective "melting
pot" and would probably faced extremely difficult
problems if it had not been for a deliberate policy of
"Americanization"
through the public school system seems fairly certain."
Considering the old boy wrote this in 1960, he seems
fairly prescient.
Probably means he deserved the
Nobel.
As
for the present day, it is impossible
to imagine any
local Superintendent of Schools even uttering the
word "Americanization"
for fear of charges of sacrilege from the
Holy Office of multiculturalism.
May 06, 2002
