Teachin English in 'Zona

Another new controversy for Arizona: teachers with thick accents shouldn't be teaching English:

"The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English,"

This will of course get the juices flowing in the "they're a bunch of xenophobes" crowd. Such as this CNN reporter:

"Their accents reflect who they are and where they came from. What's more important? What teachers say or how they say it?" Phillips wondered.

Yes, apparently Ms. Kyra Phillips believes that not being able to correctly pronounce English words while teaching English is a non issue. And not only Ms Phillips, but a few of the teachers interviewed in her story, one of whom said there is no correct way to say English words. It's what the teachers say that matters (or says, whatever).

OK, wondering if the same should apply to math and science teachers. If a math teacher were to teach that 2+3=6 would that be OK as long as they said in a way that matters?

MORE 5/25/10

BTW, the grammatical error above was intentional but the sentence was certainly written in a way that matters (not that this blog would ever flaunt its use of the written word). Anyway, what matters here is why--Arizona appears to be going after those who would teach forms of Spanglish or its derivative in an effort to protect the culture. It may well be a losing battle.