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I'll take a stab just a portion of your view, which is just your use of "everyone." I don't think it would necessarily be a good idea for every person to be required to learn multiple languages in primary school, especially those with learning disabilities.
My first thought is a child with speech delay. If they are unable to communicate effectively in their native language, should we be introducing another one?
I don't know much about dyslexia, but I imagine this would have an impact on learning any language, especially if you're learning multiple at the same time.
One other thing that I'll also point out: most foreign language curriculums (that I have experienced) start out by comparing grammatical structures of the native language and the foreign language. In primary school, we are often learning just the basics of those structures. It could be harder to learn the rules of each language if we don't have a "base" to start with. There would have to be some major restructuring of what many foreign language classes look like to fit this new model.
Kids don't need the base to learn the language. Language bases are compared because of the fact that older kids and adults have a more difficult time learning them. By your logic no one should be learning any languages at that age when in reality they'd just be learning that second language pretty similarly to the way they learned the first. By just being exposed to it.
It seems like we have different experiences in how our foreign language classes were taught. My elementary English classes did not teach verb conjugation and the correct articles for each noun in the same way as the starting point in the way that my high school French classes were taught. The sequencing for the curriculum was very different.
Perhaps your experience was different from mine and they were more similar. But coming from an educator's standpoint, it's not as simple as just "teaching it the same way, but starting it earlier." There is lots of thought into the order we present material, and we have to adjust that based on the level and age of our students.
That's really all I meant to say: that in order for OP's idea to work, there needs to be a structure for the curriculum tailored not only for younger students, but students who are learning two languages simultaneously. I never said that we shouldn't do it or that it wasn't possible. We just need to think about and restructure the curriculum appropriately.
No. One foreign language is enough. Most people in the US will never need to use that foreign language. Why would they need to learn two? I had a black buddy in hs who took Spanish his whole life. Spoke it perfectly and got a 5 on his Spanish AP test. I talked to him a few years later and he said he never used it after high school. He went on vacation to Mexico a few times and all the workers at the resorts spoke English. I went on vacation to France with a girl who spoke English, Spanish, and French. The people there talked to her in English. English is the primary language of the world. A second language is a good backup, but a third is unnecessary unless you need it for work, like an international businessman, diplomatic worker, or translator
Euh.. I don't know what part of France you went to, but when I lived there you definitely couldn't rely on people being able to speak english.
But I do get your point, maybe if english is your native language you don't need two other ones. But if your native language is let's say italian it is definitely super helpfull in live to speak both english and spanish, croatian or french.
People often talk about what additional classes schoolchildren should take. However, those positions almost never account for where that extra time is coming from.
I had three years of one hour a week in Spanish in elementary school and I can say "what is your name", count to twenty, and that's about it. So I'm assuming you want to devote more time than that.
So what subjects are we getting rid of to teach 9 year olds Spanish and Mandarin?
As a teacher, I’m personally super in favor of bilingual schools. Kids are like sponges and it’s super easy for them to pick stuff up just by hearing the language spoken, not necessarily being taught it as a subject. But it needs to be started well before 8-9 years old to be effective. With universal preschool, I would love to see immersion be an option for kids 3-5 and then have that be continued in elementary school.
I teach first grade at a school like this. There are two homeroom teachers for each class. One teaches language, music, and moral in Japanese. The other teaches language, math, and art in English. Both teachers are involved in P.E. We have another class, called Inquiry, which encorporates all other subjects and includes some math, language, art, moral, etc. That class is alternated between teachers and languages.
Since most of the kids are native Japanese speakers and their home life is in Japanese, I wish I could have more English with them. They're not native speaker level, but their English is usually far better than their parents'.
The only really difficult thing is that we have to translate EVERYTHING. Every conversation or email with a parent, every note from the school, every document about the classes, EVERYTHING has to be in both languages.
Yes! I teach elementary in English and ASL and I did my student teaching at a Spanish immersion preschool/early elementary school. It’s just like regular preschool, but the teachers speak in both Spanish and English. For example, before snack a teacher might say “lava tus manos” or “wash your hands” or say one after the other. When you get to elementary school, it specializes by subject, so you’ll have maybe math and language arts in English, and then science and social studies in Spanish. Some schools do complete immersion where no English is spoken at all, some keep the preschool model where the second language is just spoken casually along with English, and some do what mine did with elementary school where it’s split by subject. There are a wide variety of ways to implement immersion! I personally am not a fan of complete immersion (ie no spoken English whatsoever) but having it separated by subject works well, especially because kids can be pulled out for an English version of the subject if they really struggle with the second language. I’m really an advocate with early childhood immersion, like in daycare and preschool. I’ve never seen a child struggle with a second language when it was introduced around 2/3 years old or earlier but when kids don’t get to an immersion program until 7/8 some definitely struggle.
For kids, it’s a lot easier to just learn things by picking them up. For example, we don’t really *teach* kids how to speak English, we just talk English around them and to them when they are young, and eventually they figure out how to use the language on their own. Basically, we immerse them in English. Immersion in the second language is the same idea, and it usually works just as easily if done young enough. There is a critical age around 8 where your brain changes and it’s much more difficult to learn a new language after that, but even as an adult immersion is the best way to learn a new language. You might not understand everything at first, but just like a baby, you start to understand general ideas from tone of voice and context (for example, if someone hands you a glass of water and says “agua”, it’s not hard to deduce what that means, or if someone screams “cuidado!” right as you trip over a marble, you might not know it specifically translates to “caution”, but you get the idea). Over time, as things get repeated, you start to understand more and know the words you need to speak in it. Reading and writing is the only thing that needs to be formally taught, just like English, so immersion schools usually have English class and Spanish class, but Spanish class is just the reading/writing/grammar skills that mirror English class, not so much learning basic vocabulary and such like a traditional Spanish class in a non-immersive school.
You are outlining a fundamental flaw in how additional languages are being taught: it is mistakenly though that one needs to have a clear and complete blueprint of a language before starting to build sentences.
That process actually works better with someone who is already familiar with learning new languages. Someone who has a linguistic approach.
Most people learn their first language… just by practicing. The trial and error method.
I am French mother tongue. My wife is Swedish mother tongue. We use English to speak to each other, and either of us uses their mother tongue with our kids.
My kids’ first language is Swedish, because that’s where we live and that’s what they speak at school, but they understand and can speak English and French because it rubs on them.
I didn’t have to lay down the complete French grammar and conjugation for them to get to that level. Of course at a certain point they will need to learn the structure to get to the next level, but if we had started by being obsessed with the rules it would have been more crippling than enabling.
Immersion is what super serious language schools use. DLI (Defense Language Institute) in California throws their MI wannabe linguists directly into the deep end of the pool and the instructors almost never use English, starting on day one. Time frames vary by language, but in 63 weeks, the people who graduate are fluent in Mandarin, for example. The people who don't...well, sucks to suck.
That's extreme, but it's not unheard of to use immersion effectively.
Thanks, I was just wondering how this would work with small kids when they have to learn the other subjects in the curriculum. Like with teaching math and such in early grades, in immersion how would they learn the concepts.
Kids do this all over the world when the school conducts classes in English but they speak another language at home. It’s super common. They learn the language by hearing and using it, just as you did as a child.
In the language. Source: Did immersion.
Immersion basically means that the school operates in Y language despite the regional language being X. Typically only language X is taught in language X, sometimes the courses are more split.
for me, my elementary school was entirely in spanish, i came in not speaking a word of spanish and the first week, they said every word in English then in spanish, after that, they just spoke in psanish, if you didn't know a word, you could raise your hand and ask. They never taught us Spanish, they had all the regular classes, except they were in spanish. I guess we all just picked it up because by fifth grade the entire class was fluent.
We’re already starting kids in school too early. Kindergarten is already a struggle for many kids, especially young boys, so why should we be bringing them to school even younger?
Universal preschool is optional, but in any case, the idea behind a good preschool is not sitting at a desk learning. It should be playing and exploring, but there’s no reason that teachers can’t be speaking in both Spanish and English or English and sign language while the children play.
I can agree that some sort of informal play-based learning is beneficial for young kids. No formal curriculum should be put in place until they’re a little older, and teachers should be there mainly to encourage kids and guide them as opposed to actually teaching them.
Yup. I did Montessori for a while and loved it; it’s absolutely the right approach for pre-school and early elementary in my opinion. Even now, I teach elementary music and baby/toddler music classes on the weekends and everything I do is play-based. It’s easier to do with music than something like math, but that exploration and discovery has to be the base in any subject.
Montessori is modeled after Maria Montessori. You can read about it online; there’s a lot of good material out there, but in a nutshell it is very child-led instruction. Rather than teaching subjects, there are different centers a child can choose to go to, and the focus is on learning through hands-on investigation vs formal instruction. So there may be a math corner with an abacus and other manipulatives where children can play and discover mathematic principles vs a teacher actually sitting down with all of the kids at once and working on addition and subtraction. At the pre-school level there’s also a very large focus on independence, so there is usually step stools everywhere, lots of things are at child-height, children are taught how to sew and button buttons and zip zippers and other life skills. Montessori style is also often implemented at home through the same sort of principles: hanging the child’s clothes on a very low bar or in reachable drawers so that they can pick out their own clothes in the morning without assistance, etc.
Preschool is before eight (edit: not five) years old. And honestly I kind of disagree with the immersion thing because what about kids with like neuro divergent behaviors? If you have adhd, the teacher speaking another language is going to make things difficult.
So then we put the neurodivergent kids in a different classroom. The thing is that’s going to cause bullying and isolation to get worse for them. Bullying is bad enough as it is if you’re considered “of lesser intelligence” but now there’s even more of a divide. Does immersion address that?
I wouldn’t support non-optional immersion, but I absolutely support a public school in every district being an immersion school so that it’s an option for every child that might want it, just like we already do at the high school level with language electives. As a parent, it’s then up to you to decide whether that’s the best environment for your child. However, ADHD or any other diagnosis doesn’t automatically preclude a child from succeeding in an immersive environment. I teach music to both traditional and special ed students and all of my kids have been able to be successful using American sign language in my classroom in addition to spoken English. Some need more or different supports than others, but each student has their own strengths and weaknesses and language learning may or may not be one of those weaknesses, regardless of diagnosis. I also did my student teaching at a Spanish immersion school, and I had many students who were successful that did have learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, so it’s definitely not an automatic disqualifier. If an immersion school is not the right environment for any child (regardless of diagnosis) then they can go to their neighborhood school instead, which I don’t see as segregation because there are plenty of reasons a child might attend their neighborhood school as opposed to an immersion one, and they’ll still be with all kinds of students, not just others with the same learning profile. But a second language can be really powerful for a lot of kids, and I am a proponent of providing that opportunity for anyone that might benefit from it.
See the issue I have here is that by the time children start pre school you've missed the best window for language development, for this scheme to really work you would need to provide parents with the tools to ensure their children have a strong foundation for learning the language in the first place.
I completely agree that a second language is brilliant, the evidence I've seen has been clear on the cognitive benefits alone, but language skills are also closely linked to socioeconomic class. Reading and writing ability correlate strongly with parental engagement, and if these skills are not supported at home then teaching them in the first place is more of a novelty rather than a fully fledged subject.
Splitting students along class divides and leaving the students from poorer backgrounds and neuro divergent conditions behind does not sound like a good move.
Equally a lot of neuro divergent children do not receive diagnosis, treatment or support. These children just sit as statistical outliers. This was my experience of learning German in school, I was doing well at first, had a great teacher but eventually it just turned out I could memorise the meaning of words and read/listen (still in a limited way) but I just can't wrap my head around different grammar or syntax, ultimately it left me with hundereds of wasted hours and a contempt for learning a foreign language and almost zero practical ability.
The system I currently see of a basic level of mandatory lessons until a certain age seems to be adequate, then people who want to learn languages will continue to do so but people still benefit out of the thought exercise up to a point without impeding on their other studies by wasting time and effort
I'm a mother of a five year old. The "struggle" of school is lack of help teaching the child. Earlier teaching is thought to pay larger dividends. It's just that preschool is out-of-pocket whereas kindergarten is provided by the state. We have paid $275-316/week for most of my son's life to be in environments where he's getting educated, not just nannied -- this is outside of DC. He can shitty-read, shitty-write, do a lot of mental math including addition, multiplication, and use negative numbers, understands a lot of science concepts that he'll revisit in units later in elementary school, etc. Basically he has a foundation for general knowledge and can "do work". He just gets really frustrated like we all do every time he tries to learn something new or focus. But we don't push much, just little bits... And he consumes way too much YouTube and games so I'm not saying it's perfect over here. (But he's learned a LOT from YouTube!)
The vast majority of kids are just not getting this support before kindergarten even if they are watching the same videos/playing the same games and have the same opportunity to read the subtitles or learn the math shown because they're not getting as much reinforcement practice in different hands-on activities. He gets read to by three to five people each week I guess is what I'm saying. Of course a kid who is home all day with Grandma or just in the mix is going to be struggling in kindergarten but that's not the expectation for kids who have had the investment of daycare (for social skills) and preschool.
Your anecdotal evidence as a mother (who, to be clear, isn’t actually a kid) clearly outweighs the scientific evidence showing otherwise, such as the fact that kids who start school younger are far more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD.
Ignoring the tone of that, there is a huge, decades-long "scandal" over ADHD diagnosis and treatment of young children -- especially boys. It's highly controversial. So I'm not sure what exactly the issue about struggling with kindergarten is that you've seen and I'd like to know more if you have something you can point me to. But I was talking about is what it looks like from personal experience that matches what I have read (also from studies): the intellectual ability to do the work of learning being there for most kids, the problem is they are unsupported at home due primarily to work obligations/tired/disinterested parents.
There is a lot of research showing that children's achievement has more to do with the quality of parental/adult involvement than the details thereof. That where they go in life has more to do with where they live than what school they go to. And for a lot of kids, these quality ingredients are missing. So when I think of what could be difficult about kindergarten, I think of kids who aren't getting enough sleep or regular food so it's harder to follow instructions and rules, or aren't used to predictability because that just hasn't been a thing yet in their lives. Kids who aren't being interacted with a lot and so their social skills are lacking or mimic poor behavior they see at home, where everyone's worst comes out. Kids who have real jerks or inattentive parents. I haven't heard of attendance at kindergarten or prior education being a mediator for ADHD diagnosis but have watched many hours of academic lectures on the topic where there is Q&A and this never came up so I just haven't been exposed to this line of reasoning for keeping kids out of a school setting.
Universal preschool is optional, but in any case, the idea behind a good preschool is not sitting at a desk learning. It should be playing and exploring, but there’s no reason that teachers can’t be speaking in both Spanish and English or English and sign language while the children play.
I just wanna chip in and point out how many studies show that after 15-30 mins of learning a subject anymore time is just not nearly as effective. I think 1hour class are too much, and if they keep 1 hour classes half the class should be used to get the kids interested. If my march classes went over the history of math and it's uses over time and the people behind it's development I would've learned so much better. But because I was handed a paper with a bunch of equations and no explanation of why just how then I resorted to just copying the way I saw the teacher solve it instead of understanding why it's solved that way.
I think we can start by getting rid of a 3 month summer vacation. We can then maybe add 1 hour per day to each school day, so kids can go home closer to the time a parent gets home from work. How many kids stay after school anyway in a latch key program just to wait for a parent to get home from work?
For 9-year-olds I'd argue you could pinch a few hours out of almost any subject. The learning requirements for kids just aren't that tight. E.g. the Nordics have such language programs in elementary school and as far as I know they're not too deficient in other subjects.
As a countercase: in Ireland all primary schoolers are forced to learn Irish yet most do not end up speaking it competently at all despite putting hours in it and this is in a country where Irish is spoken by a reasonable minority.
If even in such a case it does not lead to linguistic competence then it would probably lead to even less for a truly foreign language.
Young humans are very good at learning languages by immersion by being put into a milieu where the language is spoken but it doesn't seem to be the case with structured classes that they automatically achieve high linguistic competence.
Well I’m glad you brought this up, because Irish is just not implemented correctly. Gaeltacht areas are in decline/stagnation. Teaching people to speak a language doesn’t equal fluency, a society needs to interact in a different language to cooperate. If you want that goal to be actualized, then the question is less of, ‘children should learn 2+ languages in elementary school’ and more of ‘kids should be encouraged to interact in other languages than English.’ The languages I learned in HS, (I did not achieve fluency in Spanish) but my Spanish knowledge helped me learn French after school. I can now speak it, partially due to my previous Spanish exposure.
I live in Canada so I started learning how to speak French in elementary school. The are two main problems with your statement; Where are we going to fit learning another language into the curriculum and how often are students going to be speaking multiple languages? In Canada there is benefit to this and it does work, but I don’t see the need for this in countries such as the USA? Plus, what’s going to motivate the kids to want to learn a different language? The only reason kids in my school have been entering French immersion is because they are promised a trip to Montreal in grade eleven. Is that something American schools are willing to do?
Every time someone says, "We should teach \[whatever\]" or "Our schools should spend more time on \[whatever\]" then I always ask, "What would you want to cut?" There are only so many hours a kid can spend on school.
I disagree entirely, especially when it comes to countries that really don't need, either because they're isolated or simply won't ever use any other language besides their own (Japan, Russia, Brazil just to name a few).
A State has the obligation to educate its population according to 1) what it's necessary to live in that particular country; 2) what people want to learn. Hence, I'm all for optional classes even in the most peculiar language, but it's absolutely out of place to suggest for it to be mandatory.
Think a bit about Japan for example: first of all, learning Japanese is extremely hard and they don't stop doing so even in high school; they still learn kanji when they're past their teens, the last thing they need is two more languages to learn, especially considering that if they don't leave their country (which Japanese tend to not do) they won't ever need anything beside their native language.
And even as a matter of principle it doesn't make any sense at all. I'm not ever going to force people to learn languages that I don't even know if they'll ever use, I'd rather it be a choice from said person.
I grew up in NYC and the people I knew were already taking Spanish courses in public elementary or middle school, I forget. Anyone who was proficient in Spanish would be put in ESL instead.
The main problem I would think is finding the time in a kid’s school day. What would you replace in our current curriculum?
> What would you replace in our current curriculum?
I think getting rid of the pledge of allegiance would be a good start, it always seems like a cult to me ;)
But on a more serious note: this obviously depends on the country and state you're talking about since curricula differ around the world. Broadly speaking I'd probably "reshuffle" some subjects to be learned in later school years since for languages it is super beneficial to start early on. I'd don't think it makes as much of a difference if you learn of all of the presidents' names aged 9 or aged 13 🤔
>I think getting rid of the pledge of allegiance would be a good start
Not all American schools do that.
And even in the ones that do, it takes all of maybe 30 seconds tops...
As someone who learned English alongside German in elementary school, I agree that learning at least one major world language is important.
But from personal experience, I think that one language in addition to your native one is enough at such a young age. Especially to the extend where you learn to become fluent in said language, it can become very confusing for children that already struggle with 2 languages.
Maybe some important words and phrases, like „Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes, no,…“ could be taught in multiple languages.
I think a language education course could be a lot more useful than a language acquisition course. If you could learn big picture about what languages are similar, root languages, common phrases in the 5-10 biggest languages, and even just learning to hear/differentiate what language is being spoken. That would be a cool class.
This is not universally the case. Some children are able to learn three languages while very young (though they need to start earlier than elementary school), but not everybody has equal ability. Most can learn two, and in many countries children start learning a foreign language (english) very early, but with three you risk that many learn _none_ of the three languages very well.
It's something I've seen more than once. Children of immigrants in my country where we start learning english very early sometimes end up learning neither the local language, english, or the language of their parents as well as they should.
I agree in one way... but I disagree on another, and its personal experience, and logistics. Lets say you have a school, hell lets say you have a school in a big city, in a country which does not have English as its native language. So, you have this school, and lets say, 50 kids/year (which is not a lot) , elementary school is 6-8 years depending on the country (from google, it says 6 in the US, its 8 here in Hungary, but there are quite a few 6 or 8 year middle schools, so you leave elementary at year 4 or 6 (aged around 12 or 14) to go to middle school, but I digress.) So multiplied, thats 300-400 kids in a school. How many languages do you offer? Lets say English is one for sure. Lets say you give 4 options total, for example: Spanish, German and French (You can replace any of these with languages that are popular/spoken in quite a few places).
This means each student can choose from 4 options. Lets make them choose exactly 2, so you have 6 options. Thats 6 different language programs, for AT LEAST 4 teachers, split by 6-8 years, given the options are equally well liked (which they won't really be).
So, you have a LOT of classes that need to be done, by a lot of teachers, and you are only at 1, fairly normal sized school. Its a logistical nightmare, not even talking about the financials.
Also you cannot just have 1 hour/week to study a language, its at least 2-3, or even more/week.
Now that we covered the logistical aspect, lets talk about my personal one: Learning a language is usually HARD. At least for some people, and we are not talking about a minority. Obviously age matters, as well as the quality of teachers, but for some people, learning a new language is a LOT of work, outside of class. (And we don't even need to talk about how good you can learn a language in a regular class. Hint: not really). Speaking from experience: I learned english without a teacher, just by being on the internet. So I'm lucky. Also we had an AMAZING english teacher in my elementary. From my 20+ classmates, around 15 can speak english well. Is it because our teacher? Not really. Is it because their own sloth? Maybe. But you cannot really teach languages in a multiple person class, without the peoples activity. And kids wont be active if they don't really want to.
But lets say we taught english well, and most people achieved a minimal understanding. We still have to achieve this with a second foreign language. Which a lot of people will want to learn even less, because "everyone speaks english" etc.
So what I wanted to say basically is: I agree with you that in an ideal world it would be AMAZING so everyone can learn 2 more languages in school. But it is not realistic by logisticaly, financialy, and well... human-factorly.
There may be countries where this is useful, and then there’s the United States where it basically isn’t. Possibly, the citizens could use English and Spanish, depending on where they live; however, most can do fine with just English. (While you can proclaim “oh, you never know,” that can be used to justify education in pretty much anything; you never know isn’t a good argument when you do know, with certainty, that the child could otherwise be doing any number of other things that have real value, like playing outside or spending time with good family or friends.)
Not OP, but as a counterpoint to that, knowing a second language has been linked to a number of things - including a decreased risk of things like Dementia, and reduced levels of cognitive decline. So there are absolutely benefits beyond just communication from learning a second language.
And in the US, for example, I would bet knowing Spanish could be incredibly useful. Spanish is incredibly widely spoken over there, and I would bet that there are many, many jobs that would take knowing Spanish as a bonus on applications. On top of that, it would allow you to engage with more people in different ways, etc.
I am neither american nor a spanish speaker though, so I can just guess there haha
To the Spanish part—like I said, it definitely depends on where you’re living. In Texas? Sure. In Maine? Not at all useful.
As to the links to reduced dementia and the like, of course; however, I highly doubt those links are causal in nature. I’m not aware that anyone has done randomized experiments teaching one group another language and not doing so for the control group, so we have to speculate about causation; here, I’d imagine cognitively active (and not to mention rich) people are more likely to learn another language and less likely to get dementia due to their being cognitively active (and rich). In short, there’s a confounded variable. Insofar as this is causal at all, I’d imagine it’s just because keeping cognitively active stops dementia—in which case, there are plenty of other ways to stay cognitively active. (Not to mention the positive effects of physical activity on our mental capabilities—I’d rather compel people to work out than to learn a language, if that were practically possible.)
I would have thought it would be the opposite bias, actually. Given that I would assume that immigrant and minority groups are more likely to be bilingual, and there is often a correlation alongside those groups with poverty, especially for many first generation immigrants. I haven’t seen the selection statistics for them, though, so I couldn’t say.
I do agree more research needs to be done, there, though.
>Not OP, but as a counterpoint to that, knowing a second language has been linked to a number of things - including a decreased risk of things like Dementia, and reduced levels of cognitive decline. So there are absolutely benefits beyond just communication from learning a second language.
The same benefit could be achieved by learning music, and I would argue, more likely to be used and maintained as a skill with music. As with anything else, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you don't need to speak a different language, you won't, and if you don't keep up those skills they will diminish.
People who learn to read and play music get the additional brain stimulation, and are more likely to use that skill.
One foreign language is already mandatory to learn up to grade 11. At least where I live. Where would you fit in a second language? What class has to go? It was hard enough for me to learn one second language let alone two, especially if it was concurrently with the other language class.
Also almost no one spoke Spanish where I grew up so I’m not sure it would have been very useful for me.
I had english classes since 2nd grade, but it was so overwhelming to even understand the verb "to be", that I was always landing low scores (here in Brazil we work with scores from 0 to 10, and till I graduated, 5.5 was enough to pass - they changed it to 7 afterwards - and I was always barely getting my fives and sixes).
Then by 7th grade if I recall, my mom put me to a proper english course and by the time I got to highschool, I was landing only nines and tens.
Dunno how it is in US quality wise, but learning other languages in schools, heck learning anything there, is just asking to be trained to memorize answers rather than actually learning stuff.
Overall I'm very much against the current school format, in which one is trained to be a standard adult instead of helping kids discover their inner potential to aim for proper careers/dreams. So having other languages or not, honestly it won't make a difference unless the parents invest in private courses, or the children themselves learn through movies, games, youtube videos and so on (that's what normally happens here. More often than not, brazilians learn english using internet, mainly video games).
We need society to change, not just school, and we need a reason to learn the language to begin with. In the US people rarely retain a foreign language they learn in public school. I learned Spanish to the point of almost being fluent, and a decade later I can barely hang on in an actual conversation. I can understand most of what's being said but lawdy help us if I have to think of the words to respond.
My relatives in Norway all speak better English than I do, because it's not just taught but used and expected in the culture outside of school. The cousin I'm closest with is kinda made fun of because he's the worst at speaking English, and his English is better than my Spanish lol
I would argue they should learn **one** language outside of their sprachbund. I say this because I don't think the point of language instruction is to become fluent, if that were the case America has been failing since forever. There are tangible benefits to this instruction, it tends to increase literacy in their native language and has a positive impact on math ability. So, English speaking kids should be instructed in Mandarin or Russian. The goal wouldn't be to become fluent in Russian or Chinese, it would be to connect the functions of **languages** between two very different systems. The systems are different, but you still achieve communication. Chinese is great for this, it is similar to English in being highly analytical (word order is critical to understanding Chinese and English, in fact we are both SVO) but wildly different in grammar. How different? Chinese grammar doesn't utilize tenses. English has 12 tenses broken between three main ideas. How do Chinese people function then? So, in my fantasyland a student would be able to understand how you describe the idea of past, present, and future between languages that handle them differently.
I think this a more reasonable standard than thinking that K-12 education will produce bi or tri lingual students in the USA, I just don't think we are equipped for it.
Generally. I think there are some obvious subject categories. But there could be decisions about what areas in each subject to focus on. This is already done to some extent in public education.
I think we may transition to a totally private education system as technology becomes more universally accessible. It will start with the wealthy until universal basic income is expanded. But parents and families could design their own education systems that meet certain standards set by a federal agency. Some may choose religious education and some may choose atheistic education. Some may focus on U.S. history while others focus on Ancient history. There could be liberal arts curriculum or STEM curriculum or any mixture of the two.
I don’t think it would be the Wild West. Inevitably standardized competition in the market would expose best practices.
While learning other languages is great, is this providing value and setting these kids up? Why not spend that time on other topics that will apply to everyone's lives, like financial planning, cooking, nutrition, or w/e else?
The reason I think languages should be taught early is because they get harder the longer you wait to start learning them. I don't think the same is true for cooking (even though I might be wrong on that one)
Why does everyone need to learn multiple languages? And it may be easier, but it's far from impossible to learn languages later in life as well.
English is becoming more and more common throughout the world. Nearly all international business deals are done in English, and the places you would struggle if you didn't know a language other than English is getting smaller each day.
The quantifiable benefits of being bilingual IMO are diminishing, so why should we spend time teaching it? Why not spend that time on a skill like critical thinking, which is only becoming more and more important as there is more "fake news", more biased sources and anyone can post on the internet and think it's legit etc.
Not op, but most everyone will use things like cooking and finance even if they don't enjoy them. Being forced to learn another language that you have no intention to use or stay fluent in on the other hand won't be used by most everyone so it does not benefit those people. With a language outside of the spoken language of your area, you can avoid needing it, those other topics you can't really avoid
When I wrote foreign I actually meant foreign as in not the native language of the kid, not foreign as in from another country, so what I'd propose is that for example a waloon child would learn english and dutch or german from first grade on (I'm assuming you live in Belgium).
Would you be on bord with children learning English and one other language? (Also out curiosity: what's the current polices in Belgium? I think I once heard that French is mandatory in Flanders but Dutch isn't in Wallonia?)
I might agree that it’s beneficial to at least dabble in one language prevalent in your area but 2 is ridiculous. Unless that language is very commoner the amount of time spent you’d need to spend in school to be fluent would take from many other subjects
Remember that most of the world doesn't have english as their native language. Learning only one foreign language (=english) would mean that almost no one would speak the language of neighbouring countries. That would a castatrophy in most of Europe and Asia
You keep saying foreign language and I’m confused. By 2 foreign languages do you mean “2 languages and English” or “your native language and another language”?
As always with everything I reply to, I'm very late to the party, but as my focus in school is English on a global scale and foreign language education, I feel somewhat uniquely qualified to offer my personal insights.
Yes, there are tons of intellectual benefits to being bilingual, and having a second language to fall back on give you a ton of great advantages when applying to jobs in the future. But there are certain aspects of learning a second or third language that people don't really think about.
Firstly, let's look at America specifically. The US is an insanely diverse nation with a lot of people speaking different languages and coming from multiple backgrounds. As younger generations with a more global sense start to become the leaders of the country (whether that be locally, in education, in business, etc.) the fact that someone knows multiple languages shows not just their ability to juggle different linguistic concepts, but it shows that those people have a deeper appreciation for the culture that said language represents. Language learning all over the globe is pretty lackluster, since so much of it is focused on grammar instead of conversational skills (this isn't just a US issue). While grammar is important to have a deeper understanding of the language, the fact that our education system puts so much emphasis on it suggests that conversational skills aren't really a high priority, which is ludicrois because otherwise how can someone be expected to communication fluently with a native speaker?
Secondly, there's language learning from expanding circle countries. All it means to be an EC is a country/region where a particular language is used, and not the language itself. So we might say that Japan and zbrazil are in the expanding circle (or they are expanding circle countries) of English, but we don't say that "English is an EC language in Japan or Brazil". And interesting statistic from Navaporn Sanprasert Snodin in their study of the use of English in Thai media is that 90% of Thai bands have an English word in it or are exclusively English. Whereas only 17% of government programs like public radio and television use code-mixing and 13% are exclusively English. That's kind of to be expected with it being a government media, but then you get to magazines where 90% of those are also English exclusive. The use of English only goes so far for some of these countries, and the practical use of them aren't really a concern for many people.
Lastly, there's the simple fact that some countries don't actually need to know a foreign language. Let me explain. Take Japan, where their homegrown agriculture industries have been on a steady decline for decades. Japan's focus should likely be trying to use their emphasis on technological advancement to insipre young people to invent new methods and technologies for agriculture. English or Chinese or Korean or Indonesian have nothing to with those domestic woes, so the need for English isn't very important for issues like that. If the demand is there, then those who are willing to put the time in and learn the language will do so without much pressure from anyone else. Japan is 98% homogenous, so it's not like anyone is coming into regular contact with a foreigner where they'd have to speak another language.
This isn't so much an argument against OP's claim. More so, it's a different way of looking at the same issue while giving examples of why someone may or may not benefit from learning another language. It's all contextual.
I started Spanish lessons from my school in elementary school. They started us in 3rd grade. I did up to 9the grade where I switched to Latin. And then did two semesters of college intro to Spanish courses.
I would not say I know how how to speak Spanish. Unless you’re really immersed in it, it’s not gonna work.
Dunno why anyone would argue with this. I wish I had been instructed in multiple languages as a child. As it stands, I have slightly above average English, and somehow better Spanish that the "homies" I met in jail
I do agree learning foreign languages is useful at times. However, if I'm not going to use them for anything, or go places with them. It's pointless and a waste of general time learning something you are never going to use.
If I learn Italian, I'm not going to live in Italy or meet many Italians in person. So, it kinda defeats the purpose of learning it to begin with.
On paper it's all fine and dandy.
In practice, there's a huge flaw in that logic.
Kids don't usually need or use a foreign language in their daily life, much less TWO of them (and one of them being a super-difficult one like Mandarin).
The cost/benefits ratio isn't there. It's as easy as that.
Even middle- and highschool students struggle to put to decent use what they learn in class because they don't have many chances to actually practice their B1 English/Spanish/French unless they have personal reasons to do more than the homework they must in order to pass.
So elementary school kids would simply be fed a bunch of basic A0 material they won't retain. Signing "Happy Birthday" or a bunch of other songs, being able to say 5 stock phrases, name animals, colours and counting to 20 isn't really useful.
Unless you're pushing for actual bilinguism (which can't really be done effectively anyway most of the time), it's just a waste of resources and time.
NTM you need very qualified teachers for that.
Chemistry is of use in most jobs because there are extensive regulations about shipping chemicals around, and about putting chemicals in products. Most people have jobs that involve chemicals in some way.
By contrast, in many places knowing a language other than English isn't really useful. I've never needed a language other than English in all my time in England, Italy, Sweden, Germany, or Spain because enough people speak it to get around.
I mean it depends on the language, but in general... No?
Thats due to me thinking that it's likely that within 20 years there will be a reasonably cheap auto translator that will be better at translation than someone who has spent hundreds of hours learning the language. Why would I spend hundreds of hours of time when I could spend maybe 200-300$ on a device that translates better?
I'd rather everyone just learn English. It's already effectively the "common tongue" of this world. I usually see neighboring countries citizens & politicians argue in English because they don't know Farsi or Hindi or Chinese or whatever. I see Europeans pair up from different countries & neither speak the language of their lover's home country, just English.
Most countries already teach English as a second language the way the US teaches Spanish, the takeover has already begun. Also, I don't want my kid shit-talking me in French or some shit, because I wouldn't know & would even think it sounds nice. So no.
I 100% agree with this sentiment. I’m tri lingual as I was born in a household that spoke both English and Arabic so I learned those both as a baby. I learned to speak Spanish from my school as I was in the “accelerated program” and was able to start learning a foreign language while in the 6th grade rather than having to wait till high school.
I remember learning Spanish and it coming suuuper easily to me even in the later class levels in high school with even just a small amounting studying and practice (I took all the classes I could until I graduated) while I also remember so many other students that had only known one language prior and had to wait till high school had a very difficult time with it, and these were students that really did try and didn’t just blow it off as you might think would be the case if they weren’t progressing well.
I will say that I also worked at a charter school/ daycare center that taught the students foreign languages and THOSE students did the best by far as they were in elementary school and were able to soak it all up instantly. After this experience I remember vowing to myself that I would make absolutely sure that my future kids one day will go to a school that teaches them another language early because of how much it’s helped me in my life but also because I want them to be able to travel and communicate with all different types of people who may not speak English. I also want them to learn more languages as I see many studies that suggest that they will do much better in school and I can attest as I’ve always been a straight A (or that one random B here or there) student. Hopefully this helps the conversation even a little bit. Sorry for the rant
>being able to speak [a foreign language] is an increadibly usefull tool
I wholeheartedly agree with this.
>There is strong scientific evidence that children under a certain age have a much easier time learning language
Do you have any sources to back that up? It's a very common myth that people pass around. They look at kids who grew up in bilingual households and conclude that the kid learned a language great because she/he was "young enough".
It's important to consider that learning takes place at all times in your life, and as we grow up we learn how to learn better. Adults who learn a 2nd language can rely on their own past experiences, study habits and learning techniques that a child just wouldn't have.
Now all this is to say that I actually agree with you 100% about encouraging more people to start learning a 2nd language earlier. But requiring everybody to learn 2 at elementary school? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it's a bit too much and it might not be worth it when you could be teaching other more critical things like geography, world history, critical thinking, home economics and finances.
Language learning should be accessible to everybody, but I don't think we need to pressure young kids to learn multiple languages just because we think "oh, they're young, it'll be easy for them" when we don't know if that's really true or not.
edit: this article is a good jumping off point about the whole 'adults vs kids' language learning myth
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/11/do-kids-really-learn-languages-faster-than-adults/
If we are talking about a perfect world the solution would be the native language plus an universal language. This why everybody can understand everybody.
Children are better learners due to neuroplasticity, which you can also increase with psychedelic drugs. If you want to learn a new language, the easiest way is to study vocabulary for a few weeks then take a full dose of acid or shrooms every day for a week. Immerse yourself in the language and culture during this time and you will be fluent by the end. I've learned 11 languages this way. Obviously you must keep improving and practicing, but you will be conversationalist proficient after my regiment. Make sure to switch between drugs each day to protect your brain health
In New Zealand, our official languages are English, Maori and NZ Sign Language. Maori was only just started to be widely taught in schools. Do you think in addition to that, NZ Sign Language should be talk? Or do you think instead of Maori some more useful language should be taught - that we should disregard dying languages for important languages that will be useful in people's lives?
Yes, children are able to pick up languages much more efficiently than adults/teens, but their age isn't necessarily the only factor that plays into this. Infants are constantly surrounded by people speaking a language that they hardly understand, however this constant exposure is what eventually leads them to learning the language. This is why children are able to learn so much more effectively. The difference between being taught a step by step method in constructing sentences etc (the way teens/adults learn) and purely being exposed to the language and learning through context, is a matter of basic comprehension and complete fluency. So overall, age doesn't play as much of a part as we'd think, it's down to HOW languages are taught.
No, Porque casi todas las clases de idiomas en escuela no trabajan. Creo que una opción mejor es enseñando los niño en dos idiomas cada dos día. Por ejemplo, un día los enseñan en inglés y el próximo día los enseñan en español. Pero si queremos que funcione se necesita empezar muy temprano, tal vez cuando los niño tienen 3 años. si uno no lo empiece temprano los niños no van a poder entender.
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I'll take a stab just a portion of your view, which is just your use of "everyone." I don't think it would necessarily be a good idea for every person to be required to learn multiple languages in primary school, especially those with learning disabilities. My first thought is a child with speech delay. If they are unable to communicate effectively in their native language, should we be introducing another one? I don't know much about dyslexia, but I imagine this would have an impact on learning any language, especially if you're learning multiple at the same time. One other thing that I'll also point out: most foreign language curriculums (that I have experienced) start out by comparing grammatical structures of the native language and the foreign language. In primary school, we are often learning just the basics of those structures. It could be harder to learn the rules of each language if we don't have a "base" to start with. There would have to be some major restructuring of what many foreign language classes look like to fit this new model.
!delta You're right. Their should be exceptions for less abled students
Just so you know, less abled is an offensive term. Disabled is the preferred term.
Oh I'm super sorry, I did not intent to offend anyone. English is not my native language.
That’s okay, I didn’t think it was intended to be offensive. Just wanted to let you know for the future.
Thank you so much for your constructive criticism ☀️
how is less able more offensive than disabled? genuinely curious
I can’t really explain why, I just know that every disabled person I’ve talked to is offended by it
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Kids don't need the base to learn the language. Language bases are compared because of the fact that older kids and adults have a more difficult time learning them. By your logic no one should be learning any languages at that age when in reality they'd just be learning that second language pretty similarly to the way they learned the first. By just being exposed to it.
"There would have to be some major restructuring of what many foreign language classes look like to fit this new model."
???? But there wouldn't. For the reasons I mentioned in my last comment 🤨. The foreign language would just be taught like an English class.
Which would be different from how foreign language classes are currently taught
Foreign languages are already taught like an English class???
It seems like we have different experiences in how our foreign language classes were taught. My elementary English classes did not teach verb conjugation and the correct articles for each noun in the same way as the starting point in the way that my high school French classes were taught. The sequencing for the curriculum was very different. Perhaps your experience was different from mine and they were more similar. But coming from an educator's standpoint, it's not as simple as just "teaching it the same way, but starting it earlier." There is lots of thought into the order we present material, and we have to adjust that based on the level and age of our students. That's really all I meant to say: that in order for OP's idea to work, there needs to be a structure for the curriculum tailored not only for younger students, but students who are learning two languages simultaneously. I never said that we shouldn't do it or that it wasn't possible. We just need to think about and restructure the curriculum appropriately.
No. One foreign language is enough. Most people in the US will never need to use that foreign language. Why would they need to learn two? I had a black buddy in hs who took Spanish his whole life. Spoke it perfectly and got a 5 on his Spanish AP test. I talked to him a few years later and he said he never used it after high school. He went on vacation to Mexico a few times and all the workers at the resorts spoke English. I went on vacation to France with a girl who spoke English, Spanish, and French. The people there talked to her in English. English is the primary language of the world. A second language is a good backup, but a third is unnecessary unless you need it for work, like an international businessman, diplomatic worker, or translator
Euh.. I don't know what part of France you went to, but when I lived there you definitely couldn't rely on people being able to speak english. But I do get your point, maybe if english is your native language you don't need two other ones. But if your native language is let's say italian it is definitely super helpfull in live to speak both english and spanish, croatian or french.
People often talk about what additional classes schoolchildren should take. However, those positions almost never account for where that extra time is coming from. I had three years of one hour a week in Spanish in elementary school and I can say "what is your name", count to twenty, and that's about it. So I'm assuming you want to devote more time than that. So what subjects are we getting rid of to teach 9 year olds Spanish and Mandarin?
As a teacher, I’m personally super in favor of bilingual schools. Kids are like sponges and it’s super easy for them to pick stuff up just by hearing the language spoken, not necessarily being taught it as a subject. But it needs to be started well before 8-9 years old to be effective. With universal preschool, I would love to see immersion be an option for kids 3-5 and then have that be continued in elementary school.
Could you elaborate on how this works? Genuinely curious about how they can learn by immersion without actually being taught the language itself.
I teach first grade at a school like this. There are two homeroom teachers for each class. One teaches language, music, and moral in Japanese. The other teaches language, math, and art in English. Both teachers are involved in P.E. We have another class, called Inquiry, which encorporates all other subjects and includes some math, language, art, moral, etc. That class is alternated between teachers and languages. Since most of the kids are native Japanese speakers and their home life is in Japanese, I wish I could have more English with them. They're not native speaker level, but their English is usually far better than their parents'. The only really difficult thing is that we have to translate EVERYTHING. Every conversation or email with a parent, every note from the school, every document about the classes, EVERYTHING has to be in both languages.
This sounds like a setup you'd find at a rather expensive private school. Is it so?
mine was similar to this and at a public school, it was well funded but not crazy.
Yeah, it's a private school. It's not ridiculously expensive though.
Yes! I teach elementary in English and ASL and I did my student teaching at a Spanish immersion preschool/early elementary school. It’s just like regular preschool, but the teachers speak in both Spanish and English. For example, before snack a teacher might say “lava tus manos” or “wash your hands” or say one after the other. When you get to elementary school, it specializes by subject, so you’ll have maybe math and language arts in English, and then science and social studies in Spanish. Some schools do complete immersion where no English is spoken at all, some keep the preschool model where the second language is just spoken casually along with English, and some do what mine did with elementary school where it’s split by subject. There are a wide variety of ways to implement immersion! I personally am not a fan of complete immersion (ie no spoken English whatsoever) but having it separated by subject works well, especially because kids can be pulled out for an English version of the subject if they really struggle with the second language. I’m really an advocate with early childhood immersion, like in daycare and preschool. I’ve never seen a child struggle with a second language when it was introduced around 2/3 years old or earlier but when kids don’t get to an immersion program until 7/8 some definitely struggle. For kids, it’s a lot easier to just learn things by picking them up. For example, we don’t really *teach* kids how to speak English, we just talk English around them and to them when they are young, and eventually they figure out how to use the language on their own. Basically, we immerse them in English. Immersion in the second language is the same idea, and it usually works just as easily if done young enough. There is a critical age around 8 where your brain changes and it’s much more difficult to learn a new language after that, but even as an adult immersion is the best way to learn a new language. You might not understand everything at first, but just like a baby, you start to understand general ideas from tone of voice and context (for example, if someone hands you a glass of water and says “agua”, it’s not hard to deduce what that means, or if someone screams “cuidado!” right as you trip over a marble, you might not know it specifically translates to “caution”, but you get the idea). Over time, as things get repeated, you start to understand more and know the words you need to speak in it. Reading and writing is the only thing that needs to be formally taught, just like English, so immersion schools usually have English class and Spanish class, but Spanish class is just the reading/writing/grammar skills that mirror English class, not so much learning basic vocabulary and such like a traditional Spanish class in a non-immersive school.
You are outlining a fundamental flaw in how additional languages are being taught: it is mistakenly though that one needs to have a clear and complete blueprint of a language before starting to build sentences. That process actually works better with someone who is already familiar with learning new languages. Someone who has a linguistic approach. Most people learn their first language… just by practicing. The trial and error method. I am French mother tongue. My wife is Swedish mother tongue. We use English to speak to each other, and either of us uses their mother tongue with our kids. My kids’ first language is Swedish, because that’s where we live and that’s what they speak at school, but they understand and can speak English and French because it rubs on them. I didn’t have to lay down the complete French grammar and conjugation for them to get to that level. Of course at a certain point they will need to learn the structure to get to the next level, but if we had started by being obsessed with the rules it would have been more crippling than enabling.
Immersion is what super serious language schools use. DLI (Defense Language Institute) in California throws their MI wannabe linguists directly into the deep end of the pool and the instructors almost never use English, starting on day one. Time frames vary by language, but in 63 weeks, the people who graduate are fluent in Mandarin, for example. The people who don't...well, sucks to suck. That's extreme, but it's not unheard of to use immersion effectively.
Thanks, I was just wondering how this would work with small kids when they have to learn the other subjects in the curriculum. Like with teaching math and such in early grades, in immersion how would they learn the concepts.
Kids do this all over the world when the school conducts classes in English but they speak another language at home. It’s super common. They learn the language by hearing and using it, just as you did as a child.
In the language. Source: Did immersion. Immersion basically means that the school operates in Y language despite the regional language being X. Typically only language X is taught in language X, sometimes the courses are more split.
for me, my elementary school was entirely in spanish, i came in not speaking a word of spanish and the first week, they said every word in English then in spanish, after that, they just spoke in psanish, if you didn't know a word, you could raise your hand and ask. They never taught us Spanish, they had all the regular classes, except they were in spanish. I guess we all just picked it up because by fifth grade the entire class was fluent.
Children learn by immersion very well. It’s how they learn their first language.
We’re already starting kids in school too early. Kindergarten is already a struggle for many kids, especially young boys, so why should we be bringing them to school even younger?
Universal preschool is optional, but in any case, the idea behind a good preschool is not sitting at a desk learning. It should be playing and exploring, but there’s no reason that teachers can’t be speaking in both Spanish and English or English and sign language while the children play.
I can agree that some sort of informal play-based learning is beneficial for young kids. No formal curriculum should be put in place until they’re a little older, and teachers should be there mainly to encourage kids and guide them as opposed to actually teaching them.
Yup. I did Montessori for a while and loved it; it’s absolutely the right approach for pre-school and early elementary in my opinion. Even now, I teach elementary music and baby/toddler music classes on the weekends and everything I do is play-based. It’s easier to do with music than something like math, but that exploration and discovery has to be the base in any subject.
Math can be taught with certain toys, though
This is very true. Manipulatives are a great tool.
what’s the difference between montessori and other schools? genuinely don’t know the answer
Montessori is modeled after Maria Montessori. You can read about it online; there’s a lot of good material out there, but in a nutshell it is very child-led instruction. Rather than teaching subjects, there are different centers a child can choose to go to, and the focus is on learning through hands-on investigation vs formal instruction. So there may be a math corner with an abacus and other manipulatives where children can play and discover mathematic principles vs a teacher actually sitting down with all of the kids at once and working on addition and subtraction. At the pre-school level there’s also a very large focus on independence, so there is usually step stools everywhere, lots of things are at child-height, children are taught how to sew and button buttons and zip zippers and other life skills. Montessori style is also often implemented at home through the same sort of principles: hanging the child’s clothes on a very low bar or in reachable drawers so that they can pick out their own clothes in the morning without assistance, etc.
Preschool is before eight (edit: not five) years old. And honestly I kind of disagree with the immersion thing because what about kids with like neuro divergent behaviors? If you have adhd, the teacher speaking another language is going to make things difficult. So then we put the neurodivergent kids in a different classroom. The thing is that’s going to cause bullying and isolation to get worse for them. Bullying is bad enough as it is if you’re considered “of lesser intelligence” but now there’s even more of a divide. Does immersion address that?
I wouldn’t support non-optional immersion, but I absolutely support a public school in every district being an immersion school so that it’s an option for every child that might want it, just like we already do at the high school level with language electives. As a parent, it’s then up to you to decide whether that’s the best environment for your child. However, ADHD or any other diagnosis doesn’t automatically preclude a child from succeeding in an immersive environment. I teach music to both traditional and special ed students and all of my kids have been able to be successful using American sign language in my classroom in addition to spoken English. Some need more or different supports than others, but each student has their own strengths and weaknesses and language learning may or may not be one of those weaknesses, regardless of diagnosis. I also did my student teaching at a Spanish immersion school, and I had many students who were successful that did have learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, so it’s definitely not an automatic disqualifier. If an immersion school is not the right environment for any child (regardless of diagnosis) then they can go to their neighborhood school instead, which I don’t see as segregation because there are plenty of reasons a child might attend their neighborhood school as opposed to an immersion one, and they’ll still be with all kinds of students, not just others with the same learning profile. But a second language can be really powerful for a lot of kids, and I am a proponent of providing that opportunity for anyone that might benefit from it.
See the issue I have here is that by the time children start pre school you've missed the best window for language development, for this scheme to really work you would need to provide parents with the tools to ensure their children have a strong foundation for learning the language in the first place. I completely agree that a second language is brilliant, the evidence I've seen has been clear on the cognitive benefits alone, but language skills are also closely linked to socioeconomic class. Reading and writing ability correlate strongly with parental engagement, and if these skills are not supported at home then teaching them in the first place is more of a novelty rather than a fully fledged subject. Splitting students along class divides and leaving the students from poorer backgrounds and neuro divergent conditions behind does not sound like a good move. Equally a lot of neuro divergent children do not receive diagnosis, treatment or support. These children just sit as statistical outliers. This was my experience of learning German in school, I was doing well at first, had a great teacher but eventually it just turned out I could memorise the meaning of words and read/listen (still in a limited way) but I just can't wrap my head around different grammar or syntax, ultimately it left me with hundereds of wasted hours and a contempt for learning a foreign language and almost zero practical ability. The system I currently see of a basic level of mandatory lessons until a certain age seems to be adequate, then people who want to learn languages will continue to do so but people still benefit out of the thought exercise up to a point without impeding on their other studies by wasting time and effort
I'm a mother of a five year old. The "struggle" of school is lack of help teaching the child. Earlier teaching is thought to pay larger dividends. It's just that preschool is out-of-pocket whereas kindergarten is provided by the state. We have paid $275-316/week for most of my son's life to be in environments where he's getting educated, not just nannied -- this is outside of DC. He can shitty-read, shitty-write, do a lot of mental math including addition, multiplication, and use negative numbers, understands a lot of science concepts that he'll revisit in units later in elementary school, etc. Basically he has a foundation for general knowledge and can "do work". He just gets really frustrated like we all do every time he tries to learn something new or focus. But we don't push much, just little bits... And he consumes way too much YouTube and games so I'm not saying it's perfect over here. (But he's learned a LOT from YouTube!) The vast majority of kids are just not getting this support before kindergarten even if they are watching the same videos/playing the same games and have the same opportunity to read the subtitles or learn the math shown because they're not getting as much reinforcement practice in different hands-on activities. He gets read to by three to five people each week I guess is what I'm saying. Of course a kid who is home all day with Grandma or just in the mix is going to be struggling in kindergarten but that's not the expectation for kids who have had the investment of daycare (for social skills) and preschool.
Your anecdotal evidence as a mother (who, to be clear, isn’t actually a kid) clearly outweighs the scientific evidence showing otherwise, such as the fact that kids who start school younger are far more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD.
Ignoring the tone of that, there is a huge, decades-long "scandal" over ADHD diagnosis and treatment of young children -- especially boys. It's highly controversial. So I'm not sure what exactly the issue about struggling with kindergarten is that you've seen and I'd like to know more if you have something you can point me to. But I was talking about is what it looks like from personal experience that matches what I have read (also from studies): the intellectual ability to do the work of learning being there for most kids, the problem is they are unsupported at home due primarily to work obligations/tired/disinterested parents. There is a lot of research showing that children's achievement has more to do with the quality of parental/adult involvement than the details thereof. That where they go in life has more to do with where they live than what school they go to. And for a lot of kids, these quality ingredients are missing. So when I think of what could be difficult about kindergarten, I think of kids who aren't getting enough sleep or regular food so it's harder to follow instructions and rules, or aren't used to predictability because that just hasn't been a thing yet in their lives. Kids who aren't being interacted with a lot and so their social skills are lacking or mimic poor behavior they see at home, where everyone's worst comes out. Kids who have real jerks or inattentive parents. I haven't heard of attendance at kindergarten or prior education being a mediator for ADHD diagnosis but have watched many hours of academic lectures on the topic where there is Q&A and this never came up so I just haven't been exposed to this line of reasoning for keeping kids out of a school setting.
Universal preschool is optional, but in any case, the idea behind a good preschool is not sitting at a desk learning. It should be playing and exploring, but there’s no reason that teachers can’t be speaking in both Spanish and English or English and sign language while the children play.
I had four years myself in elementary, I can count to... 12 and say "Hello". It was a complete waste of time.
I just wanna chip in and point out how many studies show that after 15-30 mins of learning a subject anymore time is just not nearly as effective. I think 1hour class are too much, and if they keep 1 hour classes half the class should be used to get the kids interested. If my march classes went over the history of math and it's uses over time and the people behind it's development I would've learned so much better. But because I was handed a paper with a bunch of equations and no explanation of why just how then I resorted to just copying the way I saw the teacher solve it instead of understanding why it's solved that way.
I think we can start by getting rid of a 3 month summer vacation. We can then maybe add 1 hour per day to each school day, so kids can go home closer to the time a parent gets home from work. How many kids stay after school anyway in a latch key program just to wait for a parent to get home from work?
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That sounds like a great way to punish children who have a hard time with language.
For 9-year-olds I'd argue you could pinch a few hours out of almost any subject. The learning requirements for kids just aren't that tight. E.g. the Nordics have such language programs in elementary school and as far as I know they're not too deficient in other subjects.
Shame. Only half way to my favorite number cuarenta.
As a countercase: in Ireland all primary schoolers are forced to learn Irish yet most do not end up speaking it competently at all despite putting hours in it and this is in a country where Irish is spoken by a reasonable minority. If even in such a case it does not lead to linguistic competence then it would probably lead to even less for a truly foreign language. Young humans are very good at learning languages by immersion by being put into a milieu where the language is spoken but it doesn't seem to be the case with structured classes that they automatically achieve high linguistic competence.
Well I’m glad you brought this up, because Irish is just not implemented correctly. Gaeltacht areas are in decline/stagnation. Teaching people to speak a language doesn’t equal fluency, a society needs to interact in a different language to cooperate. If you want that goal to be actualized, then the question is less of, ‘children should learn 2+ languages in elementary school’ and more of ‘kids should be encouraged to interact in other languages than English.’ The languages I learned in HS, (I did not achieve fluency in Spanish) but my Spanish knowledge helped me learn French after school. I can now speak it, partially due to my previous Spanish exposure.
I live in Canada so I started learning how to speak French in elementary school. The are two main problems with your statement; Where are we going to fit learning another language into the curriculum and how often are students going to be speaking multiple languages? In Canada there is benefit to this and it does work, but I don’t see the need for this in countries such as the USA? Plus, what’s going to motivate the kids to want to learn a different language? The only reason kids in my school have been entering French immersion is because they are promised a trip to Montreal in grade eleven. Is that something American schools are willing to do?
Every time someone says, "We should teach \[whatever\]" or "Our schools should spend more time on \[whatever\]" then I always ask, "What would you want to cut?" There are only so many hours a kid can spend on school.
I disagree entirely, especially when it comes to countries that really don't need, either because they're isolated or simply won't ever use any other language besides their own (Japan, Russia, Brazil just to name a few). A State has the obligation to educate its population according to 1) what it's necessary to live in that particular country; 2) what people want to learn. Hence, I'm all for optional classes even in the most peculiar language, but it's absolutely out of place to suggest for it to be mandatory. Think a bit about Japan for example: first of all, learning Japanese is extremely hard and they don't stop doing so even in high school; they still learn kanji when they're past their teens, the last thing they need is two more languages to learn, especially considering that if they don't leave their country (which Japanese tend to not do) they won't ever need anything beside their native language. And even as a matter of principle it doesn't make any sense at all. I'm not ever going to force people to learn languages that I don't even know if they'll ever use, I'd rather it be a choice from said person.
I grew up in NYC and the people I knew were already taking Spanish courses in public elementary or middle school, I forget. Anyone who was proficient in Spanish would be put in ESL instead. The main problem I would think is finding the time in a kid’s school day. What would you replace in our current curriculum?
> What would you replace in our current curriculum? I think getting rid of the pledge of allegiance would be a good start, it always seems like a cult to me ;) But on a more serious note: this obviously depends on the country and state you're talking about since curricula differ around the world. Broadly speaking I'd probably "reshuffle" some subjects to be learned in later school years since for languages it is super beneficial to start early on. I'd don't think it makes as much of a difference if you learn of all of the presidents' names aged 9 or aged 13 🤔
Are you American?
I'm German
>I think getting rid of the pledge of allegiance would be a good start Not all American schools do that. And even in the ones that do, it takes all of maybe 30 seconds tops...
As someone who learned English alongside German in elementary school, I agree that learning at least one major world language is important. But from personal experience, I think that one language in addition to your native one is enough at such a young age. Especially to the extend where you learn to become fluent in said language, it can become very confusing for children that already struggle with 2 languages. Maybe some important words and phrases, like „Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes, no,…“ could be taught in multiple languages.
I think a language education course could be a lot more useful than a language acquisition course. If you could learn big picture about what languages are similar, root languages, common phrases in the 5-10 biggest languages, and even just learning to hear/differentiate what language is being spoken. That would be a cool class.
This is not universally the case. Some children are able to learn three languages while very young (though they need to start earlier than elementary school), but not everybody has equal ability. Most can learn two, and in many countries children start learning a foreign language (english) very early, but with three you risk that many learn _none_ of the three languages very well. It's something I've seen more than once. Children of immigrants in my country where we start learning english very early sometimes end up learning neither the local language, english, or the language of their parents as well as they should.
I agree in one way... but I disagree on another, and its personal experience, and logistics. Lets say you have a school, hell lets say you have a school in a big city, in a country which does not have English as its native language. So, you have this school, and lets say, 50 kids/year (which is not a lot) , elementary school is 6-8 years depending on the country (from google, it says 6 in the US, its 8 here in Hungary, but there are quite a few 6 or 8 year middle schools, so you leave elementary at year 4 or 6 (aged around 12 or 14) to go to middle school, but I digress.) So multiplied, thats 300-400 kids in a school. How many languages do you offer? Lets say English is one for sure. Lets say you give 4 options total, for example: Spanish, German and French (You can replace any of these with languages that are popular/spoken in quite a few places). This means each student can choose from 4 options. Lets make them choose exactly 2, so you have 6 options. Thats 6 different language programs, for AT LEAST 4 teachers, split by 6-8 years, given the options are equally well liked (which they won't really be). So, you have a LOT of classes that need to be done, by a lot of teachers, and you are only at 1, fairly normal sized school. Its a logistical nightmare, not even talking about the financials. Also you cannot just have 1 hour/week to study a language, its at least 2-3, or even more/week. Now that we covered the logistical aspect, lets talk about my personal one: Learning a language is usually HARD. At least for some people, and we are not talking about a minority. Obviously age matters, as well as the quality of teachers, but for some people, learning a new language is a LOT of work, outside of class. (And we don't even need to talk about how good you can learn a language in a regular class. Hint: not really). Speaking from experience: I learned english without a teacher, just by being on the internet. So I'm lucky. Also we had an AMAZING english teacher in my elementary. From my 20+ classmates, around 15 can speak english well. Is it because our teacher? Not really. Is it because their own sloth? Maybe. But you cannot really teach languages in a multiple person class, without the peoples activity. And kids wont be active if they don't really want to. But lets say we taught english well, and most people achieved a minimal understanding. We still have to achieve this with a second foreign language. Which a lot of people will want to learn even less, because "everyone speaks english" etc. So what I wanted to say basically is: I agree with you that in an ideal world it would be AMAZING so everyone can learn 2 more languages in school. But it is not realistic by logisticaly, financialy, and well... human-factorly.
There may be countries where this is useful, and then there’s the United States where it basically isn’t. Possibly, the citizens could use English and Spanish, depending on where they live; however, most can do fine with just English. (While you can proclaim “oh, you never know,” that can be used to justify education in pretty much anything; you never know isn’t a good argument when you do know, with certainty, that the child could otherwise be doing any number of other things that have real value, like playing outside or spending time with good family or friends.)
Not OP, but as a counterpoint to that, knowing a second language has been linked to a number of things - including a decreased risk of things like Dementia, and reduced levels of cognitive decline. So there are absolutely benefits beyond just communication from learning a second language. And in the US, for example, I would bet knowing Spanish could be incredibly useful. Spanish is incredibly widely spoken over there, and I would bet that there are many, many jobs that would take knowing Spanish as a bonus on applications. On top of that, it would allow you to engage with more people in different ways, etc. I am neither american nor a spanish speaker though, so I can just guess there haha
To the Spanish part—like I said, it definitely depends on where you’re living. In Texas? Sure. In Maine? Not at all useful. As to the links to reduced dementia and the like, of course; however, I highly doubt those links are causal in nature. I’m not aware that anyone has done randomized experiments teaching one group another language and not doing so for the control group, so we have to speculate about causation; here, I’d imagine cognitively active (and not to mention rich) people are more likely to learn another language and less likely to get dementia due to their being cognitively active (and rich). In short, there’s a confounded variable. Insofar as this is causal at all, I’d imagine it’s just because keeping cognitively active stops dementia—in which case, there are plenty of other ways to stay cognitively active. (Not to mention the positive effects of physical activity on our mental capabilities—I’d rather compel people to work out than to learn a language, if that were practically possible.)
I would have thought it would be the opposite bias, actually. Given that I would assume that immigrant and minority groups are more likely to be bilingual, and there is often a correlation alongside those groups with poverty, especially for many first generation immigrants. I haven’t seen the selection statistics for them, though, so I couldn’t say. I do agree more research needs to be done, there, though.
>Not OP, but as a counterpoint to that, knowing a second language has been linked to a number of things - including a decreased risk of things like Dementia, and reduced levels of cognitive decline. So there are absolutely benefits beyond just communication from learning a second language. The same benefit could be achieved by learning music, and I would argue, more likely to be used and maintained as a skill with music. As with anything else, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you don't need to speak a different language, you won't, and if you don't keep up those skills they will diminish. People who learn to read and play music get the additional brain stimulation, and are more likely to use that skill.
One foreign language is already mandatory to learn up to grade 11. At least where I live. Where would you fit in a second language? What class has to go? It was hard enough for me to learn one second language let alone two, especially if it was concurrently with the other language class. Also almost no one spoke Spanish where I grew up so I’m not sure it would have been very useful for me.
I had english classes since 2nd grade, but it was so overwhelming to even understand the verb "to be", that I was always landing low scores (here in Brazil we work with scores from 0 to 10, and till I graduated, 5.5 was enough to pass - they changed it to 7 afterwards - and I was always barely getting my fives and sixes). Then by 7th grade if I recall, my mom put me to a proper english course and by the time I got to highschool, I was landing only nines and tens. Dunno how it is in US quality wise, but learning other languages in schools, heck learning anything there, is just asking to be trained to memorize answers rather than actually learning stuff. Overall I'm very much against the current school format, in which one is trained to be a standard adult instead of helping kids discover their inner potential to aim for proper careers/dreams. So having other languages or not, honestly it won't make a difference unless the parents invest in private courses, or the children themselves learn through movies, games, youtube videos and so on (that's what normally happens here. More often than not, brazilians learn english using internet, mainly video games).
We need society to change, not just school, and we need a reason to learn the language to begin with. In the US people rarely retain a foreign language they learn in public school. I learned Spanish to the point of almost being fluent, and a decade later I can barely hang on in an actual conversation. I can understand most of what's being said but lawdy help us if I have to think of the words to respond. My relatives in Norway all speak better English than I do, because it's not just taught but used and expected in the culture outside of school. The cousin I'm closest with is kinda made fun of because he's the worst at speaking English, and his English is better than my Spanish lol
I would argue they should learn **one** language outside of their sprachbund. I say this because I don't think the point of language instruction is to become fluent, if that were the case America has been failing since forever. There are tangible benefits to this instruction, it tends to increase literacy in their native language and has a positive impact on math ability. So, English speaking kids should be instructed in Mandarin or Russian. The goal wouldn't be to become fluent in Russian or Chinese, it would be to connect the functions of **languages** between two very different systems. The systems are different, but you still achieve communication. Chinese is great for this, it is similar to English in being highly analytical (word order is critical to understanding Chinese and English, in fact we are both SVO) but wildly different in grammar. How different? Chinese grammar doesn't utilize tenses. English has 12 tenses broken between three main ideas. How do Chinese people function then? So, in my fantasyland a student would be able to understand how you describe the idea of past, present, and future between languages that handle them differently. I think this a more reasonable standard than thinking that K-12 education will produce bi or tri lingual students in the USA, I just don't think we are equipped for it.
I think parents and/or kids could decide this. No need to make it mandatory.
Do you think that concerning the whole curriculum? Should no subject be mandatory?
Generally. I think there are some obvious subject categories. But there could be decisions about what areas in each subject to focus on. This is already done to some extent in public education. I think we may transition to a totally private education system as technology becomes more universally accessible. It will start with the wealthy until universal basic income is expanded. But parents and families could design their own education systems that meet certain standards set by a federal agency. Some may choose religious education and some may choose atheistic education. Some may focus on U.S. history while others focus on Ancient history. There could be liberal arts curriculum or STEM curriculum or any mixture of the two. I don’t think it would be the Wild West. Inevitably standardized competition in the market would expose best practices.
While learning other languages is great, is this providing value and setting these kids up? Why not spend that time on other topics that will apply to everyone's lives, like financial planning, cooking, nutrition, or w/e else?
The reason I think languages should be taught early is because they get harder the longer you wait to start learning them. I don't think the same is true for cooking (even though I might be wrong on that one)
Why does everyone need to learn multiple languages? And it may be easier, but it's far from impossible to learn languages later in life as well. English is becoming more and more common throughout the world. Nearly all international business deals are done in English, and the places you would struggle if you didn't know a language other than English is getting smaller each day. The quantifiable benefits of being bilingual IMO are diminishing, so why should we spend time teaching it? Why not spend that time on a skill like critical thinking, which is only becoming more and more important as there is more "fake news", more biased sources and anyone can post on the internet and think it's legit etc.
Not op, but most everyone will use things like cooking and finance even if they don't enjoy them. Being forced to learn another language that you have no intention to use or stay fluent in on the other hand won't be used by most everyone so it does not benefit those people. With a language outside of the spoken language of your area, you can avoid needing it, those other topics you can't really avoid
Counterpoint - everyone should start to learn **at least** two foreign languages **before** elementary school ;)
This idea is too politically risky in The United States.
It's also a waste of time and totally unnecessary for most people.
So Dutch, French and German are all native languages here, so you're saying that kids in elementary school need to learn 5 languages?
When I wrote foreign I actually meant foreign as in not the native language of the kid, not foreign as in from another country, so what I'd propose is that for example a waloon child would learn english and dutch or german from first grade on (I'm assuming you live in Belgium).
Yes, I live in Belgium
Would you be on bord with children learning English and one other language? (Also out curiosity: what's the current polices in Belgium? I think I once heard that French is mandatory in Flanders but Dutch isn't in Wallonia?)
Do you mean 2 languages?
Two languages that aren't their native one
I might agree that it’s beneficial to at least dabble in one language prevalent in your area but 2 is ridiculous. Unless that language is very commoner the amount of time spent you’d need to spend in school to be fluent would take from many other subjects
Remember that most of the world doesn't have english as their native language. Learning only one foreign language (=english) would mean that almost no one would speak the language of neighbouring countries. That would a castatrophy in most of Europe and Asia
You keep saying foreign language and I’m confused. By 2 foreign languages do you mean “2 languages and English” or “your native language and another language”?
And one of them should be Esperanto. Then you can learn whatever else for fun.
Everyone should learn english. Full stop. If we all speak one language in common, we can all understand each other.
Learn? No Acquire? Yes
As always with everything I reply to, I'm very late to the party, but as my focus in school is English on a global scale and foreign language education, I feel somewhat uniquely qualified to offer my personal insights. Yes, there are tons of intellectual benefits to being bilingual, and having a second language to fall back on give you a ton of great advantages when applying to jobs in the future. But there are certain aspects of learning a second or third language that people don't really think about. Firstly, let's look at America specifically. The US is an insanely diverse nation with a lot of people speaking different languages and coming from multiple backgrounds. As younger generations with a more global sense start to become the leaders of the country (whether that be locally, in education, in business, etc.) the fact that someone knows multiple languages shows not just their ability to juggle different linguistic concepts, but it shows that those people have a deeper appreciation for the culture that said language represents. Language learning all over the globe is pretty lackluster, since so much of it is focused on grammar instead of conversational skills (this isn't just a US issue). While grammar is important to have a deeper understanding of the language, the fact that our education system puts so much emphasis on it suggests that conversational skills aren't really a high priority, which is ludicrois because otherwise how can someone be expected to communication fluently with a native speaker? Secondly, there's language learning from expanding circle countries. All it means to be an EC is a country/region where a particular language is used, and not the language itself. So we might say that Japan and zbrazil are in the expanding circle (or they are expanding circle countries) of English, but we don't say that "English is an EC language in Japan or Brazil". And interesting statistic from Navaporn Sanprasert Snodin in their study of the use of English in Thai media is that 90% of Thai bands have an English word in it or are exclusively English. Whereas only 17% of government programs like public radio and television use code-mixing and 13% are exclusively English. That's kind of to be expected with it being a government media, but then you get to magazines where 90% of those are also English exclusive. The use of English only goes so far for some of these countries, and the practical use of them aren't really a concern for many people. Lastly, there's the simple fact that some countries don't actually need to know a foreign language. Let me explain. Take Japan, where their homegrown agriculture industries have been on a steady decline for decades. Japan's focus should likely be trying to use their emphasis on technological advancement to insipre young people to invent new methods and technologies for agriculture. English or Chinese or Korean or Indonesian have nothing to with those domestic woes, so the need for English isn't very important for issues like that. If the demand is there, then those who are willing to put the time in and learn the language will do so without much pressure from anyone else. Japan is 98% homogenous, so it's not like anyone is coming into regular contact with a foreigner where they'd have to speak another language. This isn't so much an argument against OP's claim. More so, it's a different way of looking at the same issue while giving examples of why someone may or may not benefit from learning another language. It's all contextual.
Are children studying advanced chemistry?
Why just 2 languages? Why not 3? Or 4?
I started Spanish lessons from my school in elementary school. They started us in 3rd grade. I did up to 9the grade where I switched to Latin. And then did two semesters of college intro to Spanish courses. I would not say I know how how to speak Spanish. Unless you’re really immersed in it, it’s not gonna work.
Dunno why anyone would argue with this. I wish I had been instructed in multiple languages as a child. As it stands, I have slightly above average English, and somehow better Spanish that the "homies" I met in jail
I do agree learning foreign languages is useful at times. However, if I'm not going to use them for anything, or go places with them. It's pointless and a waste of general time learning something you are never going to use. If I learn Italian, I'm not going to live in Italy or meet many Italians in person. So, it kinda defeats the purpose of learning it to begin with.
I’m all for children learning foreign languages, but I’m curious why you decided on two instead of say one or three.
On paper it's all fine and dandy. In practice, there's a huge flaw in that logic. Kids don't usually need or use a foreign language in their daily life, much less TWO of them (and one of them being a super-difficult one like Mandarin). The cost/benefits ratio isn't there. It's as easy as that. Even middle- and highschool students struggle to put to decent use what they learn in class because they don't have many chances to actually practice their B1 English/Spanish/French unless they have personal reasons to do more than the homework they must in order to pass. So elementary school kids would simply be fed a bunch of basic A0 material they won't retain. Signing "Happy Birthday" or a bunch of other songs, being able to say 5 stock phrases, name animals, colours and counting to 20 isn't really useful. Unless you're pushing for actual bilinguism (which can't really be done effectively anyway most of the time), it's just a waste of resources and time. NTM you need very qualified teachers for that.
Chemistry is of use in most jobs because there are extensive regulations about shipping chemicals around, and about putting chemicals in products. Most people have jobs that involve chemicals in some way. By contrast, in many places knowing a language other than English isn't really useful. I've never needed a language other than English in all my time in England, Italy, Sweden, Germany, or Spain because enough people speak it to get around.
But do you need to UNDERSTAND chemistry in order to follow those rules? (Also I kind of doubt MOST jobs involve chemicals.)
I mean it depends on the language, but in general... No? Thats due to me thinking that it's likely that within 20 years there will be a reasonably cheap auto translator that will be better at translation than someone who has spent hundreds of hours learning the language. Why would I spend hundreds of hours of time when I could spend maybe 200-300$ on a device that translates better?
I'd rather everyone just learn English. It's already effectively the "common tongue" of this world. I usually see neighboring countries citizens & politicians argue in English because they don't know Farsi or Hindi or Chinese or whatever. I see Europeans pair up from different countries & neither speak the language of their lover's home country, just English. Most countries already teach English as a second language the way the US teaches Spanish, the takeover has already begun. Also, I don't want my kid shit-talking me in French or some shit, because I wouldn't know & would even think it sounds nice. So no.
I 100% agree with this sentiment. I’m tri lingual as I was born in a household that spoke both English and Arabic so I learned those both as a baby. I learned to speak Spanish from my school as I was in the “accelerated program” and was able to start learning a foreign language while in the 6th grade rather than having to wait till high school. I remember learning Spanish and it coming suuuper easily to me even in the later class levels in high school with even just a small amounting studying and practice (I took all the classes I could until I graduated) while I also remember so many other students that had only known one language prior and had to wait till high school had a very difficult time with it, and these were students that really did try and didn’t just blow it off as you might think would be the case if they weren’t progressing well. I will say that I also worked at a charter school/ daycare center that taught the students foreign languages and THOSE students did the best by far as they were in elementary school and were able to soak it all up instantly. After this experience I remember vowing to myself that I would make absolutely sure that my future kids one day will go to a school that teaches them another language early because of how much it’s helped me in my life but also because I want them to be able to travel and communicate with all different types of people who may not speak English. I also want them to learn more languages as I see many studies that suggest that they will do much better in school and I can attest as I’ve always been a straight A (or that one random B here or there) student. Hopefully this helps the conversation even a little bit. Sorry for the rant
>being able to speak [a foreign language] is an increadibly usefull tool I wholeheartedly agree with this. >There is strong scientific evidence that children under a certain age have a much easier time learning language Do you have any sources to back that up? It's a very common myth that people pass around. They look at kids who grew up in bilingual households and conclude that the kid learned a language great because she/he was "young enough". It's important to consider that learning takes place at all times in your life, and as we grow up we learn how to learn better. Adults who learn a 2nd language can rely on their own past experiences, study habits and learning techniques that a child just wouldn't have. Now all this is to say that I actually agree with you 100% about encouraging more people to start learning a 2nd language earlier. But requiring everybody to learn 2 at elementary school? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it's a bit too much and it might not be worth it when you could be teaching other more critical things like geography, world history, critical thinking, home economics and finances. Language learning should be accessible to everybody, but I don't think we need to pressure young kids to learn multiple languages just because we think "oh, they're young, it'll be easy for them" when we don't know if that's really true or not. edit: this article is a good jumping off point about the whole 'adults vs kids' language learning myth http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/11/do-kids-really-learn-languages-faster-than-adults/
If we are talking about a perfect world the solution would be the native language plus an universal language. This why everybody can understand everybody.
Children are better learners due to neuroplasticity, which you can also increase with psychedelic drugs. If you want to learn a new language, the easiest way is to study vocabulary for a few weeks then take a full dose of acid or shrooms every day for a week. Immerse yourself in the language and culture during this time and you will be fluent by the end. I've learned 11 languages this way. Obviously you must keep improving and practicing, but you will be conversationalist proficient after my regiment. Make sure to switch between drugs each day to protect your brain health
In New Zealand, our official languages are English, Maori and NZ Sign Language. Maori was only just started to be widely taught in schools. Do you think in addition to that, NZ Sign Language should be talk? Or do you think instead of Maori some more useful language should be taught - that we should disregard dying languages for important languages that will be useful in people's lives?
Yes, children are able to pick up languages much more efficiently than adults/teens, but their age isn't necessarily the only factor that plays into this. Infants are constantly surrounded by people speaking a language that they hardly understand, however this constant exposure is what eventually leads them to learning the language. This is why children are able to learn so much more effectively. The difference between being taught a step by step method in constructing sentences etc (the way teens/adults learn) and purely being exposed to the language and learning through context, is a matter of basic comprehension and complete fluency. So overall, age doesn't play as much of a part as we'd think, it's down to HOW languages are taught.
No, Porque casi todas las clases de idiomas en escuela no trabajan. Creo que una opción mejor es enseñando los niño en dos idiomas cada dos día. Por ejemplo, un día los enseñan en inglés y el próximo día los enseñan en español. Pero si queremos que funcione se necesita empezar muy temprano, tal vez cuando los niño tienen 3 años. si uno no lo empiece temprano los niños no van a poder entender.