The Gateway Pundit got it wrong last week when he attacked Oregon Teacher of the Year Elena Garcia-Velasco. Popular conservative blogger Jim Hoft (a.k.a. The Gateway Pundit) posted a video of Garcia-Velasco speaking at Portland’s Roosevelt High School commencement.
His post title?
Si, Se Puede!… Oregon ‘Teacher of the Year’ Praises Obama in Graduation Speech–Can Hardly Speak English (Video)
The post itself reiterates that Garcia-Velasco “can barely speak English.”
See what you think:
Garcia-Velasco’s syntax and vocabulary are both above reproach. The native Spaniard simply speaks English with a heavy Spanish accent.
Gateway Pundit, shame on you.
My great-grandparents spoke English with a heavy German accent. And I’ll bet that, give or take a generation or two, yours did as well, Mr. Hoft.
According to The Oregonian, Roosevelt, in the St. Johns neighborhood, is the poorest high school in Portland. It’s also the only one to offer an Advanced Placement Spanish Literature course–a course taught by Garcia-Velasco.
In fact, every Spanish course at Roosevelt is taught by Garcia-Velasco. She is the entire Spanish department.
A year ago, Roosevelt senior Angel Gutierrez, the sixth of seven children in a working-class family, won a full-ride scholarship to Brown University. His parents speak little English, his father works as a pillow-stuffer, and only one of his older siblings completed high school. But the Los-Angeles-born, Portland-reared Gutierrez took a full load of AP classes–math, science, English, Spanish–and spent four hours every night on homework. He took additional science classes at Portland Community College, became highly literate in both English and Spanish, and is now finishing his first year in the Ivy League school.
Gutierrez credits Garcia-Velasco for giving him the tools necessary, not just to graduate from high school, but to be successful at Brown. He says she worked long unpaid hours before and after school helping him. Here’s an excerpt from his recommendation letter, which helped her clinch Teacher of the Year:
Two years ago when our class was preparing for our AP Spanish Literature exam she focused intensely on finishing the content a month before the AP exam in order to have a whole month to prepare. During that month we wrote essays, reviewed the material by creating summaries, and played critical thinking games. That year most of our class passed the AP exam and a few of us got fours. The percentage that passed in our class was so high that it raised our state’s average above the national average. Ms. Garcia-Velasco is an excellent, innovative and dedicated teacher.
We should blow all that off and make fun of her because she speaks with an accent?
Really?
The Gateway Pundit could have attacked Garcia-Velasco’s support for the RESPECT Project. According to Laurie Calvert, Teacher Liaison at the Department of Education, the President’s new $5 billion grant program is designed, to “redefine” the teaching profession and “change the culture” of teaching through “radical reform.” Its vision statement is full of fine-sounding language and remarkably vague on all the specifics.
Oh, wait, that’s not quite right. The section dealing with compensation is quite specific:
In our vision, starting salaries for professional teachers who have completed their clinical residency and advanced beyond Novice status (generally 2-4 years after their apprenticeships) could be as high as $60,000-65,000, adjusted as appropriate to the different geographic locations’ cost of living. Additionally, salaries would increase faster and maximum salaries would be higher so that master teachers and other teacher leaders would have the ability to earn as much as $120,000-150,000 after about 7-10 years, commensurate with principals’ salaries.
A hundred and fifty grand for nine months’ work while still in your early thirties? What’s not to like? (You can read the entire Vision Statement here.)
The Gateway Pundit could have highlighted the irony of Garcia-Velasco being allowed to give an overtly political graduation speech laden with praise for Barack Obama, when Oscar-winning movie producer Gerald Molen (Rain Man, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Minority Report) was invited to speak at another commencement ceremony, then disinvited from delivering an apolitical speech about thinking of your life as a movie.
Why was Molen barred?
Because, said the principal, he’s politically conservative.
The Gateway Pundit could have pointed out, as FrontPage Magazine did, that, while no data are available for high schools, a recent survey indicates that, of commencement speakers at the top 100 universities in the country, 71 were liberal and a mere 10 were conservative. Of the top 35 schools, only one invited a conservative speaker.
But ridiculing a teacher at an inner city school who is encouraging and equipping students from low-income families to go to college?
Because she’s a native of Spain and speaks English with a Spanish accent?
No.
We’re an immigrant nation, and that kind of xenophobia is entirely unworthy of us.
Oh, and congratulations, Elena Garcia-Velasco, on being Oregon’s 2012 Teacher of the Year.
*Excellent* post. You hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
Ms. Garcia-Velasco’s work and dedication to the success of her students is laudable, and there is certainly nothing to criticize in her syntax or diction. However, after listening to her speech, it is difficult to have a warm and fuzzy feeling about students who have likely been “enouraged and equipped” not only in Spanish Literature, but also in the tenets of socialism and ethnopolitics.
While I agree (having had teachers shamelessly campaigning for Obama in my kids’ high school classrooms this past semester!) that there’s a good chance she’s teaching more than just Spanish and Spanish Literature, I think it’s also unworthy of us to attack her with innuendo for what she has “likely” been doing. It doesn’t matter how other people choose to fight–we need to rely on the truth as our only weapon.
I don’t equate my declining to feel “warm and fuzzy” about Ms. Garcia-Velasco’s students based on a reasonable inference regarding her teaching with an attack utilizing innuendo.
For instance, when you wrote, “there’s a good chance she’s teaching more than just Spanish and Spanish Literature” you were simply noting a “likelihood” based partly on your “having had teachers shamelessly campaigning for Obama in my kids’ high school classrooms this past semester,” coupled with Ms. Garcia-Velasco’s keen admiration of Obama, which she enthusiastically expressed in an overtly political and highly inappropriate public speech. You combined your own knowledge, life experience, and observations to arrive at a logical deduction, which is not the same as factually misrepresenting, making indirect intimations or slyly hinting about Ms. Garcia-Velasco’s behavior.
When we enter into battle we certainly require demonstrable facts as worthy weapons. However, this was not a fight, but simply a discussion wherein people share their opinion. If we are not allowed to rely on common sense, and if we are forbidden from forming reasonable assumptions regarding probable outcomes of actions or beliefs, and then considering those assumptions with others, conversation – and rational thinking – will be constrained to a point where it is no longer possible.
Of course, I could be wrong or I might change my mind after thinking about this more.
>> When we enter into battle we certainly require demonstrable facts as worthy weapons. However, this was not a fight, but simply a discussion wherein people share their opinion.
Yes, I agree. And you’re more than welcome to continue declining to feel warm and fuzzy!
I guess in my mind there’s a difference between posts and comments. You’re right, we are just having a discussion or conversation here, and you’re welcome to share your opinions. In my posts, though, I’m trying as best as I can to stay in the realm of demonstrable facts. So I was explaining why I didn’t, in my post, get into what indoctrination may (or may not) be occurring in her classroom. But I see in rereading it that it came across more as a direct attack on your comment–and I do apologize!
I think I was probably also reacting, not just or even primarily, to your comment, but through it to a current of anger, bitterness and hatred that I hear in a lot of conservative commentary. (I’m not suggesting that your comment was seething with anger, bitterness and/or hatred! That’s where the reacting through it to other commentary comes in.) If Garcia-Velasco’s work and dedication to the success of her students is, as you say, laudable, then we need to be lauding it!
St. Paul says that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. That means that the way we fight needs to look very different from the way most people are fighting. When The Gateway Pundit:
* ignores everything good in the story,
* ignores even the aspects of the story to which he might make a principled challenge, and
* resorts instead to an attack (she can’t speak English) which is at face value just plain wrong, and which, even rendered in a true form (she speaks with an accent), proves to be an irrelevant and inappropriate personal attack,
his shrill hatefulness has just destroyed another tiny bit of the social fabric he’s trying to preserve.
I propose that part of the way our participation in the public arena needs to look very different from the majority style is this:
All good things come from God. So when we see good somewhere, anywhere–Garcia-Velasco’s hard work and dedication to the success of her students, for example–and praise it, we are praising the God who gives good gifts. We need, not only to oppose things we believe to be wrong and destructive, but also–and every bit as important–”whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good reputation, if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise” we need to be focusing on it, and praising it.
There was no need for an apology, as you wrote nothing untoward and I wasn’t, and am not now, offended in any way. Just ruminatin’ and cogitatin’ as they say.
I’m mostly in agreement with you, and your comments did bring a couple of additional thoughts to mind. I’ll try to enter them this evening when things slow down.