Cultural Conformity

Currently I am a teaching major, so the topic of cultural diversity comes across my path quite often. As a teacher I would have to take a step back and look at the class I was teaching as more than just a bunch of kids or teenagers. A student's background and his way of thinking would be a couple of the factors I would have to keep in mind when teaching the class. Earlier this week I happen to be a part of a conversation that drifted into this very territory. I find it rather easy to look at another person's culture or beliefs and not jump to conclusions or condemn them. My personal code is no two people are alike, so why should everyone's beliefs be the same as well? Even if i do not completely agree with someone's choices or beliefs, it is not my place to think down on them for this. But back to the topic, this conversation I was listening to started when one of my friends made a comment about how everything now a days has more than one language on it. He went on to give some examples like many food items and signs in large cities. This friend thought it was wrong that just because so many people were coming to the United States from other countries, that the US had to start to change how things were to accommodate these people. Before i had a chance to comment another one of my friends looked at him and asked when was the last time he heard another language spoken on the news when the reporter was not in the US? This made me stop and think, as did my friend. We both decided that we had never really heard another language spoken, with or without an accent, aside from English. Adding on my friend asked me what the road signs were like outside of the country, as I am the only one of us that has left the states. Thinking back to my time elsewhere in the world, almost every road sign or map was primarily written in the native language but then had English subtext below it. Telling this to my friend he just smiled and said his point was proven. As I sat there thinking about this they began to argue and I just went back to thinking of this topic. My friend made a very valid point, it seems as though many Americans believe that the US should not have to accommodate the many people coming here from around the world, and yet these same people don't realize how much the rest of the world accommodates us. In my mind I figure that it is only common politeness to extend the same hand to the rest of the world as they extend us. Of course by this point my friends were in a heated debate and I moved a few extra feet away from them before someone went nuclear. This is a topic that is rapidly growing in the world today and I'm very interested to see where other people stand and why. So I will ask you the same thing, how do you feel about different cultures coming into the melting pot of the United States?