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Why don't American children learn multiple languages?
- Thread starter hkem1
- Start date
LuciferSam
Banned
Maybe bilingualism leads to better values and more common sense.
Being gay, straight, or bilingual has nothing to do with the issue.
LuciferSam
Banned
I think being drunk had a lot to do with your post.
Being ME had a lot to do with my last post.....I don't need alcohol to think, or respond, as I do....but thanks for playing along, everyone needs a straight man/woman.....
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English only for immigrants needs to be looked at from a budget and education issue. If the parents are not required to speak English in order to become legal then their children will probably show up to their first day of kindergarten not knowing a word of English.
That puts the child at an unfair advantage which will hamper his/her development permanently. I spoke to Raymund Paredes about this issue (he is the Commissioner of Higher Education in Texas) and he informed me that if a child is not on grade level reading in third grade, that child has a less than 10% chance of going to college.
Other than education, god only knows how much money the state would save if they did not have to teach these kids English in the public schools.
But on the other hand, I do want to make it easier for immigrants to go through the process of becoming legal, and English only would probably be a big hurdle in that endeavor.
Speaking of Elephants in the room, my daughter speaks German fluently since her Mother is from Germany. She has taken at least 2 years of Spanish in Middle School and 1 year so far in High school and will take at least 1 more year. The problem though is they do not teach them how to really speak Spanish. These kids forget everything they learn. They need to restructure the curriculum.
Well the Spanish your daughter and I learned at Seaside is a joke. I know they just recently implemented an option where a student could, in 8th grade, take Spanish for credit if he/she passes a test.
But the fact that they require 6th and 7th graders to take Spanish for no credit just shows that the school acknowledges that their Spanish curriculum is just in place for show.
Spanish 1 is supposed to be for kids who have not taken Spanish previously. But, Seaside requires you to sit through two years of Spanish before taking Spanish 1.
Thats why we forget everything, because all that we learned was simple vocab and culture.
Edit: I should add that everything else at Seaside was a great experience for me and I absolutely have nothing but great things to say about the teachers and the overall program (Actually, a teacher I had back at Seaside is now the focus of one of my essays for college applications). The only thing that never made sense to me was the odd Spanish curriculum they had.
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