Should we give illegal aliens a free education??????????????????????

Amendment XIV Section 1.(5 sections) All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

14 th amendment Plyer vs.Doe Meyer vs. Nebraska How Do these relate? Lets see………………………………….

Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) What was the case about? Language Instruction Who was involved? The state of Nebraska and German Lutherans, Why was this case important in the field of ESL? Language rights were now individually protected What happened??????????????

Assimilations wanted to promote English as the national language and to ban other languages in the elementary schools. Nebraska paved the way for bilingual education and made America to realize how wrong it was to forbid teaching in any other language. By 1923, thirty four states had legislation prohibiting public instruction in any other language than English. In Nebraska, a law was passed in 1919 that "no person individually or as a teacher, shall in any private denominator parochial or public school teach any subject to any person in language than that English Language."

In 1923 Robert Meyer was a parochial school teacher in Hamilton County. He was convicted of teaching a ten year old boy a bible story in German. By doing that Meyer went against the Nebraska law that mandated English as the only form of instruction. The Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for laws to prohibit the use of foreign languages because it went against the 14 th amendment. This amendment established the constitutional basis for the educational rights of language minority students. It states that no state can make or enforce any law abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens nor deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The court stated that there was nothing inherently wrong with foreign language instruction.

Justice James C. McReynolds delivered the decision on the court case, he stated: "No emergency has arisen which renders knowledge by a child or some language other than English so clearly harmful as to justify its inhibition with the consequent infringement of rights long freely enjoyed. We are constrained to conclude that the statute as applied is arbitrary and without reasonable relation to any end within the competency of the state. As the statute undertakes to interfere only with the teaching, which involves a modern language, leaving complete freedom as to other matters, there seems no adequate foundation for the suggestion that the purpose was to protect the child's health by limiting his mental activities. It is well known that proficiency in a foreign language seldom comes to one not instructed at an early age, and experience shows that this is no injurious to the health, morals, or understanding of the ordinary child." After this decision Americanization was starting its downfall, States started lifting bans on English-only instruction.

14 th amendment Plyer vs.Doe Meyer vs. Nebraska How Do these relate? Lets see………………………………….