Texas Group: ESL Instructor's Actions, Words Out of Line
by Jim Brown
April 12, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A pro-family leader in the Lone Star State is criticizing the Houston Independent School District for employing an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher who speaks improper English and encourages students to break U.S. laws. Chavez High School English teacher Rudy Rios has admitted to using a district copier to make profane -- and grammatically incorrect -- flyers encouraging Hispanic students to attend a rally protesting restrictions on illegal immigration. The flyers read: "We gots 2 stay together and protest against the new law that wants 2 be passed against all immigrants. We gots 2 show the U.S. they ain't [expletive] with out us [sic]."
Cathie Adams, president of Texas Eagle Forum, says the Houston school system should not be employing teachers who use improper English and curse words, and who encourage students to engage in illegal activity. "I think that we have an English teacher who doesn't know English," Adams states. "And it really draws into question as an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher, is he actually teaching English -- or is he teaching courses in Spanish?"
Adams says it is a real problem if Rios is doing that. "Because if he's teaching courses in Spanish, which is typical for [an ESL] teacher, ... these students cannot then immerse themselves in our language and they cannot assimilate into our culture," she says.
The teacher's behavior, adds Adams, raises both moral and legal issues. "In the state of Texas alone, illegal aliens are costing taxpayers $4.7 billion a year," she points out. "And when we extrapolate [that figure] over the nation, we're looking at about $70 billion a year that this is costing us."
Rios, says Adams, needs to be removed from the classroom. "[C]ertainly we don't need to have teachers in the classroom who are [telling students to] go out and break the laws of the nation in which [they] live, and using language that is absolutely offensive and inappropriate with those students," she says.
Although the ESL teacher has been allowed to keep his teaching position, the district has removed him from his job as junior-varsity baseball coach.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
