I read an article in your newspaper in which a gentleman spoke of the necessity of learning English in this country. I have no qualms about that statement. It is a given. In fact, I would go further. It is important that our citizens speak standard English so that they may work and succeed.

My disagreement with him is when he said immigrants come to this country and demand that their children be taught in their native language. Untrue.

I have been in education for 28 years and have dealt with students whose parents came from Mexico, Cambodia, Vietnam, China Japan, France and Iran. Never has a parent of one of those students insisted on having the child taught in any specific language.

On the contrary, the parents of immigrant students are polite, helpful and grateful to have their children being taught in America. I have had a Vietnamese parent tell me, in his limited language, how thankful he was to our school.

I also have had Mexican parents bring gifts of food to our school because they felt we truly were concerned for their children and were doing our best to educate them. (We were.)

The most wonderful characteristic of parents of immigrant children and the children themselves is that they respect the school and its teachers.

If I, as an assistant principal, ever had to tell the parents of an immigrant child of some misbehavior (which is a rare occurrence), those parents made it a point to speak to the child and administer whatever punishment they believed in. After that, the child was back to exemplary behavior.

Would that we had the same results with all our American students!

The respect for education is an element found in people who still possess "Old World values." As a child of a couple who came from Mexico, I, too, was raised to respect school, teachers, and those in authority.

Perhaps that is why I understand the children of immigrants. I know of the pull between the values of the peer group and the values of the parents. The two groups tug and often in different directions. A child of immigrants constantly must be weighing issues and making decisions, often expeditiously. When the results are positive, the parents' influence usually has prevailed.

Those immigrants who have succeeded in this country have determined the formula for success. And speaking English certainly is part of the formula. Let us give our immigrants their due. They work hard, respect others, and speak their language until they have the opportunity to learn the new language.

Research has shown that immigrants speak their Old World language, that their children will be bilingual, and that their grandchildren will abandon the Old World language and will speak only English. That is a phenomenon that has happened in my family and continues to occur among all groups on America.

We have much to be grateful to the immigrants. Look around you. Who is doing so much of the labor from which we benefit daily? These "new Americans" with their "Old World values" just might help us return to those standards that were present in this country many years ago. And their children and grandchildren will be speaking the same language – English – that our children and grandchildren will speak.