Posted on 12/25/2008 11:53:50 AM PST by I can has Low Taxes?
I have a cousin in 8th grade who's taking a "sampler" class in which she's taught the minimum basics of Spanish, French, and German. The point is to give her a better grasp of languages so that she can choose which class to take for her mandatory language requirements in Highschool.
I believe that the highschool she'll go to also has Russian and Latin in addition.
Do folks here feel that Spanish would be a bad idea, politically/culturally? Her parents consider it somewhat gauche, and there's also a concern that encouraging kids to learn Spanish would delay assimilation of US immigrants, since it gives them less incentive to learn English.
Would you advise she take Spanish, since it's more "useful" in terms of having native speakers in the US? Or should she take one of the other languages? I don't think Latin is a likely option, being that her family is quite anti-Catholic.
Advice?
I took five years of Spanish in middle school/high school and forgot half of it in college. Later I wished like hell I’d managed to remember more so I could put it on my resume. Your cousin should take any language she wants (if she doesn’t enjoy it, she’s not likely to stick with it), but someday when she needs to get a job, Spanish will give her an edge that Latin and Russian probably will not.
Quid pro quo.
Anglos can learn Spanish and Latinos can learn English. Simple, huh?
Then the left wing Latino activists get involved. No Inglis! We want our homeland back!
Obama and Congress folds to the crazy left.
***I don’t think Latin is a likely option, being that her family is quite anti-Catholic.***
I’d suggest a class in understanding the language of the Bible.
That's a terrible mistake, bordering on child abuse. No language—not French, not German—will improve her English vocabulary and grammar, critical for scoring well on the Verbal SAT, more than Classical Latin. To forbid that because of the taint of popery is worse than ignorant, it's obscene.
Failing that, Spanish is actually the closest language to Classical Latin you'll find in high school (the only closer one is Romanian). Then of course there are the travel and business benefits others pointed out.
Young children have much higher levels of brain glucose than do older children or adults. This gives them the mental energy to learn very complicated abstracts like language.
Ideally, in the future, young children will be given intense, interactive multimedia linguistic training, that more than anything else, would physically prepare their brains for such complex abstracts in the future.
In the lower grades, abstracts like language, musical notation, and mathematics should be taught like there is not a minute to spare. Because there isn’t. Unless their brains are “shaped” to these ideas, many will be locked out of them in the future.
The vast majority of children might enjoy shows like Sesame Street, but they waste huge amounts of their time on chimpanzee level instruction. It’s a lot easier to climb a mountain if you start halfway up, instead of running around in circles at the base for half a day.
This is also the time for students to develop memory skills (like “Ben Franklin’s memory game), and train with them consistently so that they have an ordered, multidimensional structure to their learning. Otherwise, they are trapped in linear learning, which is chaotic and prone to error.
As strict as this sounds, it can be very pleasant and relaxed, because it is not pushing the children in a stressful situation, but just not wasting their time in brainless and repetitive waste and torpor.
This is the goal: not to waste student time.
That is relatively prosperous
We bought this book to help us communicate with Spanish-speaking housekeepers. In this part of the world, there is no such thing as a housekeeper who speaks English.
The book is four bucks (including shipping) from amazon (used but who cares).
**English #1 and Mandarin #2. Bases covered. Let idiots learn Spanish.**
Ok, there’s the incendiary comment the Llort was looking for. NOW, I’ll agree with it. I lost out on 2 jobs because I did not speak SPANISH. shift manager at Tyson chicken plant and at a LOUSY Local Video Rental Store in Arkansas. I do speak and understand, but I refuse to put it on a job app ... Russian, German, Japanese, I will.
You don’t have the Respect for your HOST Country to even TRY to learn the language, you deserve no respect from us. If someone TRIES to use the Home language (in this case ENGLISH), I’ll bend over BACKWARDS to help.
The only places I’ve found that this does not apply is FRANCE and Quebec, Canada.
. . .
I don't think Latin is a likely option, being that her family is quite anti-Catholic.
Advice?
Advice? Yeah. Stop associating with such small-minded morons.
I agree that it is extremely valuable to speak Spanish. But I think it is silly to study it in school. Spanish is probably the easiest foreign language to learn. Any motivated person should be able to learn it by watching Spanish tv stations and doing similar things on one’s own.
I’d study French or some other language in school.
Latin. Learn that and the rest of Indo European languages , or semitic—by comparison—will fall into your lap.
“If I were to make an effort to learn Spanish, it would be more for verbal self defense than anything else.”
Very valuable—to learn the language of your opponent, whoever that is.
“That is relatively prosperous”
Interesting point. We should take a look from the opposite end:
229: Zimbabwe
...
210: Afghanistan
...
201: Haiti
...
192: Tajikistan
...
186: Kosovo (lowest European country)
...
176: Moldova (lowest Christian European country)
...
169: Saint Helena (lowest Anglo country)
...
166: Nicaragua (lowest Spanish-speaking country)
...
157: Iraq
...
150: Paraguay (lowest S. American country)
...
119: Jamaica (lowest major English-speaking majority country)
...
50: Falkland Islands (70% Anglo)
...
29: United Kingdom (lowest major Anglo country)
I’m not really a numbers guy, and I wasn’t quite sure how to categorize some of the Caribbean islands, but you can do all kinds of fascinating things with this list.
This is why I want to be a teacher someday, just to get kids to see how many intriguing interpretations you can get out of basic information.
Learning anything is good. Spanish is useful, if for no other reason than to hear what they are saying about you. :)
Our children speak German, Mandarin, and Spanish fluently.
“Useful” needs a context. If this is a child who is gifted, German is a far better choice because it is a language of high scientific, cultural, and business achievement. It may be true that many educated Germans speak English (but far from all), but the ability to converse with scientific, cultural, or business colleagues in their own language is a significaqnt advantage. Spanish is a pleasant language, but the Spanish speaking countries to our south contribute little to the world economy or science.
Russian would be a good choice,too, but again only for a gifted child.
Depends what she wants to be when she grows up.
My 14 year old son is looking into starting Latin next year at his private evangelical Christian school. He’s thinking about going into Law School, so he thinks Latin will help.
One of my 12 year old daughters is probably going to take Spanish because she’s already had a little in middle school, and she likes it.
My other 12 year old daughter is going to take Sign Language because she has speech problems.
I figure let the kid decide what interests him.
Spain’s per capita is higher than France or UK.
That’s a huge change from the relatively recent past.
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