Gil Valdez, Ph.D., Deputy Director, NCREL, and Director of the North Central Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Consortium, suggests that genuine respect for language diversity is pivotal to LEP student success.
Gil Valdez:
I think you respect the culture, first of all, and you respect the language. They each carry the essence of the people themselves. I mean, how you deal with tension or with disagreements is handled differently, both because of language and because of culture. I mean, there are some languages that I think it's easier to communicate scientific facts -- English has become the universal language of technology and science. I don't think there's any doubt about that.
But in other areas, there's still some terms, say, from French for some theatre or that might explain better. Or in philosophy, clearly, the German language is still very, very significant, and I find myself using German terms to illustrate philosophical issues. Because again, the dominance of that language, German, in the creation of philosophy.
I would say also in music, if you think about -- especially classical music -- the phenomena of the Beethovens and the Bachs. And even then, it's interesting because you switch over to opera, and it's almost all Italian. But today, the language of opera is still Italian.