Check the facts - Obama & Language

Had a conversation recently with colleagues regarding politics. One said she didn't vote for Obama because he said we should learn to speak Spanish to help out immigrants. Another person in the conversation said she'd seen that speech as well and voted McCain. I was shocked, that I hadn't heard this one and late yesterday went on-line to check it out. Sure enough, I was able to find the speech by googling "Obama on Spanish". I listened carefully. The main points of the speech went "I agree that immigrants should learn English..." but what's more important is that we "need to make sure our children learn another language." There was no hint of "helping out immigrants". It was pretty obvious to me, although not to the Faux News twits that I also watched briefly (more than 2 minutes of Fox News and I start to gag), that Obama was strongly encouraging Americans to become citizens of the world, to broaden our understanding of other cultures, and to encourage our children to learn other languages just as other countries in the world do.

We don't hesitate to chastise our school systems when our children rank low in world standings on math and sciences, so why are suddenly protective of that same system that limits our childrens' ability to communicate outside our borders?