The right direction

There have been many debates about whether or not bilingual education should become a standard part of American eduacation. While most middle and high schools in the U.S. offer foriegn language classes, most do not go beyond a second year level. Some argue that the people in this country should not learn another language because they feel that they would be advocating illegal immigration and have a strong sense of misguided patriotism. Others take into consideration they growing latino population and overall educational benefits for children younger than 10 and decide to send their children to a growing number of bilingual taught schools throughout America.

The results are in. It appears that here in the state of Kentucky, one of the only bilingual imersion shcools that teaches courses in both English and Spanish is showing incredible signs of educational effectiveness. Lexington has 3 of the top 10 elementary schools as far as mathmatics and english testing are concerned, of those 3 only one also teaches a foriegn language. While Math and English remain the most important facits of American public education, Maxwell is able to teach the importance of not only language but diverstiy as well. Since 1987 Lexington's Maxwell Spanish Immersion Elementary School has been teaching grades K-5 in the Fayette County district. Maxwell is among the few public elementary schools in Kentucky to receive a distinguished GreatSchools Rating of 10 out of 10. If the shchool is able to teach Math, English ,and Science effectively not to mention better than most other public schools, along with a foreign language why do we not see more schools similar to Maxwell.

Relax everyone speaks english..

Everyone in the world is learning to speak english, looks like the fall of babel couldnt keep us down. There is just one problem. Not incoroporating foreign language in our curriculm is leaving american students behind by more than what is considered to be a long shot. A 2006 British study found 450 million native English speakers around the world. But as many as a billion people, mostly from China and India, were learning English as their second language. California Standards testing results show Asian students score higher in both English and math than all other students—including white students.and some estimates say there are more English speakers in China than the entire adult population of the United States.





The capabilities of bilingual educated children are continuing to amaze me. I actually have a friend in germany who i met during my senoir year of high school who at the time was an exchange student who by the age of 17 had already become fluent in German, Arabic, and most important English. I was blown away by her ability to learn and communicate effectivley in 2 languages , so imagine my surprize when I found that she also spoke arabic. At the time i never thought that achieveing fluency in another language was important, It was more like a really neat magic trick that only she was capable of performing.



That was nearly ten years ago. Through the use of facebook and also her returning to the states a few time we have been able to keep in touch. It's no surprize to me that she has now begun to master the spanish language and also has spent nearly 4 years working on the Chinese language. When i learned of her new found abilities and languages and thought of my own strugles with learning spanish, I began to feel as if I had been cheated in some way. Why was it so easy for her to pick up an entire language, learn it speak it and move on? It was simply something that she had been taught was important from the time she was young.

In Europe there are so many different languages spoken so its very important for children to become bilingual at an early age. Why couldn't our schools implement foreign language? I guess if everyone else is learning our language why learn theirs? I dont know what was going on in the minds of the people who are appointed to educate the youth of america, but someone should have told them that these bilingual children would become capable and prepared simply by breaking down conventional methods of thinking that are derived from learning and speaking only one language.

Behind the curve

Being the most diverse nation in the world one would think should make us also the most capable of easily learning other languages. On the contrary, im saddened to know that we are so far behind other nations when it comes to educating our youth in foreign language. An overwhelming amount of other countries implement foreign language curriculum very early in there youths education, making them more culturally,economically, and business savvy. Not only is learning a foreign language easier for children than it is for adults, but children who are exposed to other languages also do better in school, score higher on standardized tests, are better problem solvers and are more open to diversity.


The ever growing population of Latin Americans in the united states demonstrates an immediate need for employees who fluently speak English and Spanish. The job opportunities in this nation for people who fluently speak Spanish and English are increasing daily. From Federal government jobs, to your local dentist, the need for bilingual services has no limits. In these tough economic times when any job is a good job people who do not speak both languages are at a severe disadvantage.


To better prepare the next generation of our nation we need to begin implementing foreign language programs now. The need for the study of these languages has already been recognized but some questions still remain. How do we effectively implement such a program into our children's everyday curriculum? What languages should our children be learning? The sooner we answer these questions , the sooner we will be in contingency with the rest of the industrial nations of the world so we can once again become leaders in the educational field, and children without the advantage of being born into a bilingual family will be have the same opportunities as those who are.

One of the arguements about learning another language, is that it takes away from the culture of the native english speakers of this country, the irony is that this is the youngest nation in the world and since the begining of this country's existance we have been incredibly diverse. Our culture from the 1500's to this day has consisted of Native Americans, Africans, Irish and Italian Immigrants and a constant arrival of Mexican americans. Our nation is like a song that has been remixed with no real original song. So the arguement about forgetting ones culture is out of the window because our culture in itself has always been multicultural