On the language issue:
I'm another one of those who's in favor of the "When in Rome, do as the Romans" approach. When traveling abroad, I do my best to try and accomodate to the culture I'm visiting. If I'm in France, I pull out my French-English dictionary and phrase book and do my best to communicate. Afterall, I am the guest, the outsider entering the culture. If someone comes to the US where English is the dominant language (though not completely official, it is the de-facto language as we conduct all acts of government and business using it), I do expect them to make every reasonable effort to learn English and to speak it when conducting business. I don't expect an overnight change, but I do expect them to make an effort to work their way into the culture of the place they've moved to. As an employee/former student of a University, I see people quite often who come here to go to school, but do not attempt to use English, which causes friction with students and faculty who can't understand them, yet they do not see this as a fault in their actions. If I move to France, I better damn well learn French, or I'll be considered the typical arrogant American. If you move anywhere in the world, it is YOUR responsibility to learn the local language, it is not the responsibility of the foreign culture or community to conform to YOUR lifestyle and standards.
On the state of education in general:
There is some truth to the initial post here, though it's not as extreme as he puts it. Unions in many places do protect teachers who should not be teaching, administrators and school boards to not back-up their teachers when it comes to enforcing rules and discipline, students have little respect for teachers and administrators because they know mommy and daddy will defend them to the death regardless of what they did or if they're guilty. I have seen students stand up in the middle of classes and tell a teacher to "fuck off" when told they would not get an extension on an assignment, that same student was not disciplined when the teacher sent them to the office and the teacher was told he can't kick students out of his class... he quit later that month and moved to the University where he enjoys a much better instructional job.. he was arguably one of the better teachers the HS had. There are now also a slew of new disorders and disabilities that didn't exist 20-30 years ago that now introduce a huge list of special circumstances and special cases when grading and discipline. What was once hyperactivity/being lazy, we now have ADD/ADHD, everyone can go to a doctor and get pills for some disorder or another, we live in a society where nothing is our own fault.
The blame however does not lie with teachers, it does not lie with administrators or school boards or parents or doctors, it lies with the community as a whole that supports these behaviors and attitudes. School boards are elected by communities, those elected boards hire administrators, who in turn hire teachers. The best Teacher's Union in the world can not protect a teacher against a public drive to have them removed. Parents have a repsonsibility to instill in their children a respect for authority and a sense of appropriate behavior. Telling them things are never their fault may make early life easy, but it will bite them in the ass when they're done with school. No one group in the equation holds all the cards, able to turn around the situation on a whim. Everyone needs to be involved in fixing this one. Parents need to raise their kids in a more responsible manner, the community at large has to be more involved in the public schools (through elections and public meetings), everyone needs to keep an eye on the quality of instructors hired, that they aren't just coasting through the day doing the bare minimum. Administrators in turn have to back up their instructors when they make a disciplinary decision (within reason of course).
We need to get out of the habit of blaming all problems on some "other" group and look at the problem in terms of what we can do to help.
