(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE COMEBACK OF ENGLISH

A New York Republican named Pete King has made life in Washington even more exciting by introducing a bill called the National Language Act of 1995. Among other things, it would terminate all federal support for bilingual education and declare English to be the official language of the United States.

Possibly you thought it was already the official language. If so, you are out of the loop. We now have federal judges who conduct citizenship swearing-in ceremonies in Spanish. Many state and federal documents, including income tax forms, are now available in other languages. Many voters can choose ballots in other languages. Drivers in most states can take their license exams in different languages--35 of them in California--which would appear to raise a question about whether, once behind the wheel, they can be counted on to fully grasp the significance of locutions like left lane must turn left. Federal courts have struck down an amendment to the Arizona constitution requiring state business to be transacted in English and upholding the free-speech right of the plaintiff, a medical malpractice claims adjuster for the state, to write her reports in any old language she wishes. (The case is still under appeal.)

A lot of Americans find all this infuriating, and Arizona is not the only state endeavoring to do something about it. Eighteen other states now have some kind of legislation mandating use of English in governmental functions, and in recent weeks, laws of this kind were being waved around third base by solons in a dozen or so other states. Op-ed articles often describe such laws as a backlash by the old-fogy element, but they clearly have mass support. In Georgia a recent poll by the Tarrance Group showed huge majorities for Official English among both those describing themselves as liberals (69%) and as conservatives (86%).

Just as you knew he would, Newt Gingrich predicted in an interview the other day that "English is going to rapidly gain momentum as an official language." He added, "I think you'll see a rejection of bilingualism, which...hurts immigrant children because it... slows down the transition to English."

The war over Official English is being fought over a dizzying number of fronts and salients, but bilingual education is where passions are most in tatters. On this front, a liberal-conservative split really does seem discernible. Something like $12 billion a year is now being spent to support state and local bilingual programs, which have a vast and politically powerful constituency that took shape during Great Society days (the Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968) and that is now paralyzed with fear that something like the King bill might actually pass. The bill would not bar states from running their own bilingual programs, but some of them would clearly be in trouble without the support they now get from the U.S. Department of Education.

Arguments over bilingual education tend to be quite spirited. The program's supporters contend that the need for such programs ought to be obvious in an era when upwards of two million immigrant children are enrolled in American public schools, that these kids will get little or no education unless it is in their own language, and that opposition comes from outright meanies.

Just as you knew he would, the present scrivener cleaves to the opposing view: that the bilingual education movement is a Great Society racket. The perception here, far from original, is that the movement does a rotten job of educating kids but does a lot for big-city politicians eager to keep their constituencies ghettoized.

This view of the case gained support last fall in New York City. The ultimate Tower of Babel, Gotham was recently spending $300 million a year to teach kids in Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Russian, French, Korean, Vietnam- ese, Greek, Arabic, and Bengali. But a report by the Board of Education suggested powerfully that much of the money is wasted. It showed that the kids, even if they are recent immigrants, learn more in programs conducted mainly in English than in the bilingual programs--and also learn to speak English sooner. One cannot yet say that the board's report is "the first spadeful of dirt on the casket of bilingualism," to quote Jonathan Yardley's speculation in the Washington Post, but one is keeping a shovel handy.

GREAT MOMENTS IN RESPECT

In an "attempt at community consciousness-raising," members of the Passaic County [New Jersey] chapter of the National Organization for Women are asking parents to question the practice of same-sex birthday parties.

NOW says this is not a frivolous ... exercise but a matter for moms...to consider if they want to "encourage respect and friendship among girls and boys"...

NOW member Karen Spindel of Clifton [is] a mother of two daughters, ages 23... and 6. Her kindergartener has been invited to a lot of all-girl parties this year...

Spindel finds the concept...offensive. "What I'm seeing is that parents are [holding] all-girl or all-boy parties...Êteaching their children that sex discrimination is OK... "

"I think globally when I see things," she said.

--From an article in the Newark Star-Ledger.

THE SSA'S BIG SECRET

In an item late last year (December 12), your servant dwelt heavily on the difficulty of gaining access to the formulas that enable a fellow to calculate for himself how large his monthly Social Security check should be. You cannot possibly do it with the publication the Social Security Administration steers you to, a brief exercise titled How Your Retirement Benefit Is Figured. What you need is a much longer essay lumpily labeled Determination of Primary Insurance Amount and Maximum Family Benefit, which takes you through the whole bloody 13-step calculation. As noted in the item, we got our hands on this work only after we stopped acting like a retiree and put on our journalist's uniform, at which point the Social Security system turned out to be extremely cooperative.

As one might have anticipated, the item led many other folks approaching retirement to demand the selfsame publication--and to be told by unknowing cogs in the bureaucracy that they had never heard of it. Having just received its umpteenth letter on the subject from a frustrated reader, Keeping Up called Tom Margenau of the SSA press office and rewarded him for prior helpfulness by asking what the hell is going on. How can it be that reporters get access but ordinary pensioners can't? Immortal answer: "It's nothing they should be aware of. Most people can't figure out their own benefits because it's so complicated. We just tell them: 'Send your information in, and we'll do it free of charge.' '' Tom added that the document we cited is part of a larger work called The Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance Digest, characterized as "just an internal document'' used by the house actuaries.

Request to Keeping Up readers: Please stop writing in about the damn document. We can't help you. What you obviously need is a lawyer accustomed to handling Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

THE FOLLIES COME TO BOSTON

An interesting question is how the Supreme Court would have decided, back in 1986, if the case before it had concerned the Boston Eight instead of Mechelle Vinson. The latter party was the young lady, employed by a Washington, D.C., bank, who was judged by the Supremes to have been harassed on the job and made to toil in a "hostile environment." Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson hugely expanded the law of sex discrimination. It established that a harassment claim could be sustained even if the plaintiff was never pressed for sexual favors. All she had to demonstrate was that the workplace environment was offensive to folks of her sex. Meritor is why shipyard walls no longer feature pinup girls and why mistletoe is out at office Christmas parties.

This brings us to the increasingly famous Boston Eight and a weirdish fact: A lot of harassment claims, and sex-bias claims generally, are being filed by individuals chromosomally identifiable as males. The Boston Eight are not to be confused with the Boston Five (Benjamin Spock and other peaceniks), the Chicago Seven (Abbie Hoffman et al.), or the Hollywood Ten (Stalinoids in screenland). And yet the beantown octet, which has its own PR counselor, often acts as though it is making history. It is the principal current exemplar of "reverse sexual harassment," a term currently residing in 66 articles in the Nexis database. Coincidentally, or maybe there is a reason for it, that is also the number of articles turned up in a separate search for "reverse sex discrimination."

The eight guys claim to have been victims of a sex-based hostile environment in Boston-area outlets of Jenny Craig International, the weight-loss company, and they are suing in Massachusetts Superior Court. Jenny Craig's employees and clientele are mostly female, so it is not hard to envisage the harassment switcheroo unfolding. Media accounts note that the guys were asked to perform tasks not considered part of the jobs (e.g., shoveling snow off walkways), that they did not get invited along when femme colleagues went off to have a daiquiri or two, that they were... excluded from normal workplace gossip. The New York Times account renders the social isolation of the men in graphic terms: "A few of them say they were . excluded from office chitchat about pregnancy and menstrual periods." Harrowing, eh?

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data indicate that around 10% of sex harassment and bias claims are now made by men. A browse in Nexis makes it clear that a high fraction of the cases coming to court are guffaw-engendering. One's special favorite is the EEOC complaint brought by the chap who was working at the cosmetics counter in a Dillard's department store in Fort Lauderdale and didn't get promoted and furthermore was discriminated against in sales contests, where the prizes consisted of nonguy stuff like makeup and women's fragrances.

To come back to the question we started out with, it is plain as day that the Boston Eight would have been laughed out of court in 1986. But it is also plain that the courts are now irrevocably stuck with the expansive view of sex discrimination they created. The reverse bias claims are judicially irresistible because the boys' lawyers make sure to lean hard on all the arguments that have worked for women. The plaintiffs are excluded from workplace events open to the other sex. They are combatting stereotypes, e.g., of cosmetics as a career for women only. As one of the Boston Eight chaps has actually argued, men are up against a "glass ceiling" in female-dominated occupations. It is far too late for judges to laugh this stuff out of court. But that shouldn't stop the rest of us.