Up until World War I, communities with ethnic minorities commonly set up their own schools that taught their native languages. However, with the increasingly anti-German and generally xenophobic attitudes of Americans during and following the Great War, policy makers began restricting the teaching of these native languages. Between World War I and the present, three notable Supreme Court cases have played pivotal roles in determining the rights of language-minority communities to teach foreign languages.
The first case was Meyers v. Nebraska. In the pre-WWI 1900s, many German communities ran bilingual private schools. In 1919, Nebraska passed the Siman Act, making it illegal for any school to teach foreign languages to students below 8th grade. Citing the 14th Amendment, groups of Roman Catholic and Lutheran German parochial schools joined together to file suit against the act. Initially, the state court determined that the Siman Act could not prevent schools from teaching foreign languages outside of school hours but did restrict such teachings during school hours. When parochial schools began teaching German during extended recess periods in response, language restrictionist policy makers sought to close this loophole. Robert Myers, one of these German teachers, was fined $25 for teaching Bible stories in German to 10-year-old students. In 1923, the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that while states can regulate foreign language instruction during school hours, they could not place any restrictions on such teachings outside school hours. Therefore, this was a victory for language-minority parents and communities.
The second notable case was Farrington v. Tokushige. Along a similar vein, Hawaii passed a law that strictly regulated the hours and materials dedicated to teaching Japanese and Chinese. The Supreme Court determined that this amount of regulation placed upon private schools was unreasonable; furthermore, parents should have the right to control how their children were educated without restrictions that were unrelated to any rational state goal. Thus, Farrington achieved a similar victory for language-minority communities in terms of providing after-school language programs.
Finally, building off of Farrington, Stainback v. Mo Hock Ke Kok Po was another win for language minorities. The state court and the Supreme Court both ruled that foreign language instruction after school should not be restricted; they even went a step further to say that foreign language instruction was beneficial for bright students.
As a result of these three cases, the right of language minority communities to teach foreign languages is protected under the Constitution. Food for thought: do you think any or all of these three cases represented progress in terms of language minority rights, or did they just serve to officially return things to the pre-WWI status quo? Do you think restrictionist challenges to foreign language education might arise again despite these rulings being in place, and if so, under what reasoning will these challenges be raised?
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