Daily archives: May 25th, 2010

Dios Mio! Arizona Superintendent Out to Get Teachers with Accents

No kidding. Arizona superintendent Tom Horne is on the lookout for teachers who pronounce "comma" as "COH-ma."

Oy. Vey.

From Think Progress:

Late last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that 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”:

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators. […]

This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research.

At one school, for example, state auditors complained that teachers pronounced “words such as violet as ‘biolet,’ think as ‘tink’ and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.” The principal at that school acknowledged that teachers “should speak grammatically correct English” but said they shouldn’t be punished for having an accent.

The man in charge of this project, far-right Arizona superintendent Tom Horne — who is running for attorney general — has been going on national media in recent days to defend his policies.

What would he do if he wandered into a Latin Mass? Arrest the priest?

More here.


Park Forest Theater To Show Stanley Cup Finals on Huge Screen

From ENEWSPF:

Want to see the Blackhawks bigger than life? The Holiday Star Theater will be showing will be showing Stanley Cup finals offs on the real big screen. There is FREE ADMISSION, with an optional pizza/wing/snack buffet available for $10.00.

Seating is limited to the FIRST 100 people. A refundable reservation fee of $5.00 per person is required, which will be refunded upon arrival day of the event.

All reservations will be held until 10 minutes before game. Call the theater offfice line for further details at 708-283-9098.

That just sounds too cool.

The theater is under new owndership and has literally been transformed. Theater 5 has been completely gutted, cleaned, and put back together with fresh new seats, a great sound system, and all theaters have new projectors.

This should be quite the treat.

And, yes, GO HAWKS!