COMMENTARY: Time for Hispanics to Adapt to America's Public Schools

This week, the Huffington Post website revealed that elementary school students at the Alicante School in Lamont School District in California -- which is 97 percent Hispanic -- recite the Pledge of Allegiance in English and in Spanish every school day.

In fact, this has been the case at the school since 2002, although some parents and teachers are not happy about it.

The school principal justifies the Spanish recitation of the Pledge by saying it is an important way to include "all cultures."

One of the teachers at the school said teachers never had a chance to vote for -- or even discuss -- the idea of having the students recite the Pledge in Spanish.

The assistant superintendent of the Lamont School District told a California television channel recently that he was unaware of any concerns of teachers and parents with respect to the Pledge being recited in Spanish.

Nonetheless, some teachers and parents are opposed to having the Pledge recited in Spanish every day. The feeling is that this is America, and immigrants need to be proud to be living the American way of life; consequently, they need to adapt to American culture and to America's English language.

All of the other ethnic groups that came to America (mostly in the 20th century) -- French, Italian , Greek, Polish, etc. -- had to learn English in the public schools, without teaching or favoritism of their native languages.

If parents of these ethnic groups wanted their children to learn their native languages, they sent them to parochial or church schools instead of public schools. The same should be the case today with Hispanic children.

Indeed, Hispanic students are not entitled to preferential school treatment that other ethnic students have been and are still denied. Such preferential treatment can even be considered a violation of the U.S. Constitution and its equal protection of the laws clause.

In America, we are all Americans, and English -- not Spanish -- is our primary language of communication. Hispanics who have a problem with this American tradition should feel free to return to their native Hispanic homeland, where they can speak and learn Spanish whenever they want.