Proposition 227, immigration and English - 7 August 1998

One day this week, California started a breathtaking experiment. It's not unusual in a State 800 miles long with many geographies from deserts to snow-capped mountains, with a population 10 times that of New Zealand, or, if you prefer, two-thirds that of Great Britain.

California was swiped from Mexico. And although it didn't become a state for over 200 years after the settlement of New England, it has been, in this century, notable for bold initiatives in popular government, not least in deciding burning issues by referendum, or by what's sometimes called a proposition. The practice is, indeed, 100 years old this year.

When Californians go to the polls, they don't just vote for people. Always attached to the ballot, after a long list of national and state and county offices, there are usually two or three long paragraphs proposing reforms that are usually bold and brassy and have aroused popular enthusiasm and indignation. We're talking about Proposition 227. And please forgive the necessary background to, I promise you, a lovely story.

Thirty years ago, California started something which was meant to meet the most elementary educational need of the children of the legions of immigrants who came, first, stealing across, and then swarming across, the Mexican border.

The great majority of the newcomers spoke one language, namely Spanish. So, 30 years ago, California invented a new way of educating them. It sounded sensible and practical, if not inspired. Let the incoming Spanish-speaking children be taught the elements – reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, so on – in their own language for two years, while taking English lessons on the side.

At the end of two years, they would now learn everything that followed in the English language. It's called bilingual education. And, on paper, it sounds absolutely right, and it has worked well, but in only a very small minority in the states where it's used. In California, it has been, on the whole, a disaster.

On paper the idea makes several happy assumptions – that the Spanish teacher speaks good, decent Spanish. And that the sideline teachers, training the Hispanic children in English, are proficient in English. These basic assumptions turned out to be wildly wrong. Not only were very many Spanish teachers only halfway literate in Spanish, but the ones who then taught English were worse in English. They produced hoards of children crippled in both languages.

So the voters decided last June that bilingual teaching must end. And last Monday, throughout California, suddenly all the young Hispanic were to be taught, first and only, in English. And this massive turnabout happened everywhere, except in one or two counties who filed suit with the courts to have Proposition 227 declared unconstitutional. And the road to that reversal is, of course, the very long and rocky road through courts of appeal, through California Supreme Court – every state, remember, has one of its own – and finally on to the Supreme Court of the United States.

I take up this dramatic piece of news with the Hispanic taxi drivers I run into, which is not difficult in New York which no longer has life-time taxi drivers. They, the Taxi Commission, call taxi driving, rather pompously I think, an "entry profession".

And certainly very many young new immigrants starting in as taxi drivers and when they've made enough money move onwards and, they hope, upwards to something else. So it's been for the past, oh, 20-odd years.

First every other cab driver after the Second War was a Puerto Rican. They more or less vanished and have been succeeded, not in this order, by waves of Colombians, Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Haitians – French-speaking, Barbadians, and always masses of youngsters from a Central or Southern American country. Which explains why, worse than at any time in my New York life, you run into more taxi drivers who have the loosest possible hold on elementary English.

A month or more ago, I took a cab at my door, repeated twice an address, 111 East 55. I asked him to avoid the traffic that crowds round the Metropolitan Museum. "Please", I said, "Go over to Park!" I meant of course Park Avenue. But when I looked up from my paper, he was turning right into the park.

I let out a strangulated cry and said it loud and clear, "Park Avenue! Park Avenue!" About five minutes later, an idea occurred to me. I thought I'd make it as simple as possible. "Is this" I pronounced, "your first job? Your first job?"

I couldn't have spoken a more baffling sentence. His honest dark face crinkled in something very like panic. He couldn't possibly repeat the words because I might just as well have spoken to him in Pharsi or Sanskrit.

I had a second idea. Maybe that phrase of the Taxi Commission wasn't so pompous after all. Maybe it wasn't an example of the American well-known preference for Latin words over Anglo-Saxon. "Su taxi", I said, "es el profesion d'entrada?"

He whipped round and his eyes flashed. "Si, si, si!" he said. An entry profession. In talking to Hispanic immigrants you'd better know not so much what the English expression is as what is the literal English translation of the Spanish.

I mentioned this instructive little episode to a sociologist and he wrote me back a note. Deadpan, believe me, it said, "All immigrants have their own specific communication problems in inter-personal relationships".

Thanks a lot. That ludicrous sentence did at least strike a chord. Reminded me irresistibly of a story, a true story, told to me by one of the parties of the first part. My long-gone, beloved friend, the celebrated screenwriter and director Nunnally Johnson, the drollest human being I ever met. A gentle and indestructible southerner. He was known in Hollywood as Robert Benchley with a Georgia accent.

Well, the other party was none other than Sam Goldwyn, a Polish lad who escaped from a pogrom in Warsaw at the age of 11, made his way alone to England, found some relatives and worked as a blacksmith's helper till, at 13, he crossed to America, alone, worked as a glove maker.

By the time he was in his 40s, he was just about Hollywood's most famous, most exacting and wealthiest movie producer. He was famous also throughout the English-speaking world for his way, in a thick Polish accent, his way with the English language. He said anyone who went to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. To some invitation he didn't welcome, "Include me out!" And "a verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on".

Came the day, when Sam Goldwyn made a picture with Nunnally Johnson as the director. It was, I gather, a sort of Raffles, gentleman crook effort, and the opening scene was very like the opening scene of the Irving Berlin- Astaire-Rogers Top Hat. A gentlemen's club in London in the 1930s, lavished – by Mr Goldwyn and the writers – with all the gorgeous American preconceptions about an Englishman's club held by people who've never been in one.

Opening shot, the drawing room. Many members, all very old, all in dinner jackets, one or two with monocles. All silently reading The Times. A waiter enters and drops a teaspoon. The place bounds into life. One outraged member cries, "Who's causing this frightful din?" End of scene. The punch line was Nunnally's own.

Mr Goldwyn didn't see the rushes and was so satisfied with Mr Johnson's direction and the editing that he first saw the whole picture when it was over, in what they call rough-cut, before the final polished edit. He stopped the projection. "What", he shouted, "means with this word din. Frightful din, what's it mean?"

The assembled writers, director, cameraman, didn't know which way to look. Din meant din. What was the matter with old Sam? Well old Sam had picked English up when he got here. Never went to school in America and suddenly, to their bafflement, didn't know the meaning of a simple English word.

Seems the phrase "frightful din" was repeated several times in the dialogue, so Goldwyn walked out saying "shoot it over". And when things had cooled down, Nunnally Johnson went to Mr G and said, "Sam, it's going to cost an arm and a leg, you know, an arm and a leg, to reshoot this. All the extras have been paid off. One of the stars is on another picture." But Mr Goldwyn insisted. And another cast of club members assembled, a stand-in for the missing star, it was done.

While it was being sliced in as the new opening scene, Mr Goldwyn, one afternoon, bought an evening paper and saw a headline, "Pasadena neighbours protest dog's din". Somebody was suing the people next door to muffle a perpetually barking dog. But there was that word again!

When he reached his studio, Mr Goldwyn stopped at the switchboard and asked the first operator, "What's this mean to you?" She said, "Why, Mr. Goldwyn, the dog next door was making such a din!" "A what?" "A din, Mr Goldwyn". "You know the word? This is OK?" "Mr. Goldwyn", said the girl, "everybody knows what the word 'din' means!"

Back in his office, Mr Goldwyn telephoned Nunnally Johnson. "Nunnally!" he said, "Put it back! Stop the shooting! Put 'din' back!" At huge cost, they did.

"You know", said Nunnally, "by the time he called me I decided he was right. Din! Din! Din! It gets sillier the more you say it!"

"You knew, didn't you," I said, wiping my eyes, "that Goldwyn, as a boy, spent two years in England?"

"I knew that", said Nunnally, sadly. "I think that explains the accent!"

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