Bilingual education should be so normal in Santa Fe that it shouldn’t be a topic of discussion. Especially in Santa Fe’s hometown newspaper. A recent article indicates a “growing need” for educating Spanish speaking students. But really, bilingual education, especially for native Spanish speakers, should be so woven into the fabric of our schools that it should be as normal as the sky being blue.
But it’s not. The article discussed that the Spanish speaking population in Santa Fe is growing. According to this article, more than 30% of Santa Feans speak Spanish. Believe it or not, however, there was a time when 100% of Santa Feans spoke Spanish. It was the language of home and government and it wasn’t until Americans started flooding the area with their English laws that Spanish started fading into history.
Even those English speaking marauders tried to play nice with language. They wrote Article 12, Section 8 into our state constitution that mandated that teachers learn English and Spanish. Since everyone that the Americans encountered spoke Spanish, education needed to reflect that linguistic reality. It seems to me that the constitution made every effort to acknowledge the linguistic traditions of the area, just as the Spanish did in recognizing Tewa and Tiwa use among the pueblos they shared.
Yet, here we are, 121 years after NM became a state that we are reading about the importance of bilingual education for Spanish speakers. Yes, students should learn English. Knowing how to speak, read, and write in English is critical to student success, as American and the world’s financial systems use English. But because Mexico lost the war with the US and deeded NM (and California and Arizona) to the US within the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it seems history thinks it’s ok that Spanish use here has declined. The land upon which Santa Fe was founded was native, Spanish, and Mexican, and English is a rather new thing in comparison to the linguistic history of the region. Seems to me that the real story is that ONLY 30% of Santa Feans speak Spanish.
But it’s news that we need bilingual education. People here have forgotten their history and think only in English. Even those of us who have been here for generations speak little Spanish. But Spanish educational systems should be a foundational aspect of our schools, not an unfilled need. We should return to our linguistic traditions, whether Spanish or Tewa, Tiwa, Navajo, etc., and meld the American system with our cultural and linguistic historic identities.
