Joanne Jacobs

Thousands of Hispanic students are walking out of Los Angeles schools to protest a federal bill that would make illegal immigration a felony. It’s The Wrong Protest, writes Xiaochin Yan in Pacific Research’s Capital Ideas.

Partly to blame is that for years basic skills such as reading, writing, and math have been obscured by multiculturalism, self-esteem, and other politically correct fads. Rather than teaching immigrant students how to assimilate into the civic mainstream of America and giving them the tools they need to make that better life, schools have instead let them pass from grade to grade without really keeping track of their progress or holding anyone accountable.

While only 11 percent of California 12th graders hadn’t passed the graduation exam by the end of 2005, the failure rate was 18 percent for Hispanic students and 30 percent for immigrants, Yan notes.

Betsy quotes Peggy Noonan on assimilating immigrants patriotically. Who’s at fault?

The politically correct nitwit teaching the seventh-grade history class who decides the impressionable young minds before him need to be informed, as their first serious history lesson, that the Founders were hypocrites, the Bill of Rights nothing new and imperfect in any case, that the Indians were victims of genocide, that Lincoln was a clinically depressed homosexual who compensated for the storms within by creating storms without . . .

You can turn any history into mud. You can turn great men and women into mud too, if you want to.

And it’s not just the nitwits, wherever they are, in the schools, the academy, the media, though they’re all harmful enough. It’s also the people who mean to be honestly and legitimately critical, to provide a new look at the old text. They’re not noticing that the old text–the legend, the myth–isn’t being taught anymore. Only the commentary is. But if all the commentary is doubting and critical, how will our kids know what to love and revere? How will they know how to balance criticism if they’ve never heard the positive side of the argument?

If I wanted to make the law more welcoming to immigrants, I’d turn the rally into a citizenship class and voter registration drive.

Update: Via Right Wing Nation comes Daily Spork’s story of Francisco’s talk in speech class.

With his plaid shirt tucked into his worn jeans and scuffed loafers peering from beneath tattered hems, Francisco’s first words were:

“I talk to you about important. America is important and why I love it.”

The giggles, the papers rustling, the chairs creaking…all came to a sudden halt. Suddenly, the classroom fell silent. Teachers yelling over the din couldn’t silence we the youthful mass. But Francisco’s soft, unobtrusive voice uttering the name of our nation as his beloved vaporized the commotion in the air.

“America is…” We waited while Francisco searched the air with his eyes in an effort to force his mind to remember the English word he had just written on his hand.

“…wonderful.” Through broken English and behind large, thick glasses, Francisco told of how he grew up on the streets of Mexico City and had a parrot that sat on his porch. He worked and worked and failed in love and decided to come to America. So Francisco applied for a green card.

And he got one exactly 3 years ago. This little nervous man whom no one would normally look at twice suddenly turned into something- I don’t know what. His smile overtook his nervousness and his eyes shone through his glasses. After 60 seconds of shuffling feet and hunched shoulders, Francisco clapped his worn hands together and looked upwards.

“Thank God for America! I love America!”

Americans love immigrants like Francisco.