The Miami Herald – Christina Veiga
“Aleida Martinez-Molina learned how to read and write Spanish in the Miami-Dade County public school system decades ago, eventually going on to land a top job with a Spanish airline. Today, the Coral Gables lawyer drives along a road with a Spanish name lined with flags from Latin American countries to take her son to a public school filled with mostly Hispanic kids. Yet she finds herself utterly disappointed with his education in, of all things, the Spanish language. “We live in South Florida. Hello — foreign language is a must for everybody,” she said. Census data rank Miami as one of the most bilingual cities in the U.S. On the nightly news, in the halls of government and in the aisles of the supermarket, Miami-Dade County speaks español. But how well today’s schoolchildren read and write in Spanish — the real measure of fluency in an increasingly competitive economy — has become a matter of debate as the Miami-Dade County school system reconsiders how to teach children the native tongue of many of its residents.”(more)