To Speak English or Not to Speak English

In the short essay “Don’t Make English Official—Ban It Instead” Dennis Baron argues that if we ban a language that is so difficult to learn that basically people will want to learn to speak it. I can see the point he is trying to make in this argument, but honestly I don’t think most people are not that childish.

True when you are a kid when you are told something is forbidden, most likely you are going to try it out. But for a kid to try to learn a language seems a little absurd to do just because it is forbidden. People who already speak the language will not stop as Barron mention, they will continue to speak it, and teach it to there children, who in turn will teach it to their children. The circle will never end it will just repeat itself.

Banning the language means school will change as well. The new language will be taught, but half the students will still speak English because that’s what they were taught. Trying to teach a first grader a new language in school and when he leaves school he speaks English seems like it will cause issues. Another problem would be, if the teacher is teaching in the new language what then? Will we see a drop in the number of school drop outs because they cannot keep up with the new system?

My final point is Barron said “that today’s non-English-speaking immigrants are picking up English faster than earlier generations of immigrants did.” So why would we want to change a system that seems to be picking up? In my experience trying to change something, that is already working well, to something better always turns out for the worst in most cases. Barron said “negative psychology works with children” but what of everyone else?