Parents, step up on English learning

  I was amazed as I read a recent article in The Sun regarding state aid for students to learn English. It said Arizona can't limit additional aid to students to help them learn English to just two years.

  That seems wrong, even discriminatory.

  I recall when we had a huge influx of Vietnamese into our town in Missouri, including the family I adopted with seven children. Our teachers didn't have to learn Vietnamese! Those children worked extra hard that first year in the evenings learning English on their own time and within the first year every one of them was making straight A's.

   All seven kids went on to graduate from college. Within six months of them coming to the country, they were self-sufficient and told me they no longer needed my financial help even though they lived very simply and did without a lot of things.

  This country has a history of people coming from many different countries, whose children have managed to learn English and do well in our school system even though I'm sure it wasn't easy. I work with a nurse whose family's main language is French, but her child managed to learn English and is also doing well in school. Why is it that we only cater to the Spanish speaking and spend major tax dollars to enable them?

  It's time for their parents to step up to the plate, get their priorities straight and make sure their children are studying and learning English "on their own time." Then maybe the $40.6 million of our tax dollars being used for English as a second language could go toward the raises our teachers deserve, improvements in our educational system, etc.

FRANCIS PEGG, Yuma