Rep. Gohmert: ban kids who don't speak English because they 'bring education down'

[pinboy3niner]

3. Not BI-lingual--he's talking about non-English speakers

And the kids actually pick up English very quickly.

Years ago I ran a tutoring program for kids who were war refugees from Central America (El Salvador and Nicaragua). Their biggest challenge was homework. They hadn't been in school and had never done homework before, so they didn't know HOW to do it. They were getting failing grades in school here.

Our Vietnam vets group (local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America in Northern Virginia) volunteered to take on the challenge after all the local civic groups had turned down the school system's requests for help.

We didn't know anything about tutoring, but we had as many as 40 or so volunteers come out to the refugee families' apartment complex every week to hold tutoring sessions with the kids.

Not expecting to see tangible results, we were blown away when "our" kids were suddenly making their schools' Honor Rolls in no time at all. We were embarrassed to receive awards for the program because it took so little to make a difference.

We didn't do much. We just showed them how to do homework. That was all it took. Our kids succeeded in school and beyond, some of them going on to become doctors and lawyers.

And today any of our kids could steamroll Gohmert in a debate any day of the week.