I really hope I'm not annoying you by asking this but I made a petition asking my school district to teach Esperanto as a LOTE course in the high schools, and I was wondering if you could sign it.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/462/724/405/episd-o...

Thanks!

Is this in the USA? If people from other places than your school district subscribe the petition it should not matter. And even the author of the petition is anonymous, that subtracts trustworthiness.

What's that site by the way?

I also think it might be more effective if you went with a physical petition that you had people sign at your actual school... Well, you can try anyway. I signed it.

I am an American of many generations (1635) and an educated native speaker of General American English. I am also a "senior citizen." It is my honest opinion that most American school administrators and school boards would completely ignore or, in extreme cases, be actually hostile to petitions signed by foreigners. Like it or not, we Americans can sometimes be amazingly provincial and narrow minded people.

Yes, I myself would heartily support teaching of Esperanto in American schools, but petitions signed by non-Americans might even be literally counterproductive. The attitude might be, Esperanto? Wasn't that that communist [sic!, the demonic boogeyman of American society] language that fortunately failed miserably. Nobody speaks it [sic!], so why should we waste our time and money teaching it to our precious children? Why are these foreigners trying to tell us what to do?

Sad, but I think true. (And mind you, I myself am fairly conservative.)

flgirl2012:I really hope I'm not annoying you by asking this but I made a petition asking my school district to teach Esperanto as a LOTE course in the high schools, and I was wondering if you could sign it.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/462/724/405/episd-o...

Thanks!

If you're trying to get Esperanto in as a for-credit course, it's probably a no-go for the reasons stated by bartlett22183 above.
If you just want it there to be available for other students to know about and learn, then maybe a school club would be the way to go. I had an Esperanto club at the school I taught at when the school board nixed my teaching a class.

I think that orthohawk's suggestion is a really good one, and, honestly, the one most likely to succeed.

In my experience, which admittedly is limited, there are basically two kinds of petitions: petitions to put a law on a ballot (which can require X number of signatures to be gathered before it'll be considered), and petitions that are just attempts to convince someone in authority of something through weight of numbers.

The first kind can make a difference. The second kind rarely does. Hardly anybody cares about petitions unless they are part of some kind of formal legal process. If they aren't - and again, this is in my experience only - they are a complete waste of time.

What was said about foreigners signing American petitions: you better believe it. That will kill your case faster than just about anything else.

But a club, that's totally doable. There is no reason a school would be against people learning a language. THEY just don't want to have to teach it and thus have to answer the kinds of questions from parents that bartlett pointed out*. But if it's student-driven... I doubt there'd be much problem.

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* The word "communist" IS quite likely to appear in these questions, as mentioned. It's only surprising at first.