[Ben Chad]

Also if they require a language it shouldn't be one particular foreign language over any of the others. Just offer several foreign languages -- including Spanish and let them choose.

Budgets may vary. Also, take a scan of your radio and TV stations --- how many Russian, German, French, Italian, Portugese, etc. stations do I get? Zero. How many in Spanish? 10-20 in Dallas Tx. I took Latin in HS. It was a complete waste of time because there were no opportunities outside of Catholic churches to hear the language in practice. Es verdad?

[FITZ]

I learned Spanish --- but I studied it in Mexico. No one here makes any more money for having learned Spanish. The lower paying jobs go to the Spanish speakers --- you don't need Spanish --- not even here to work the jobs that require a higher education --- except welfare workers.

The whole purpose of Spanish is so that the immigrants can keep their culture, kids of other ancestry pick up on that --- and resent being forced to keep someone else's culture. I know kids from New Mexico with Spanish last names who were forced to study Spanish after they learned English at home and said they didn't like the language --- force doesn't really work.

[MontN]

Latin is the root language of many languages and to undersand Latin helps an educated person to understand other languages. It also helps us to understand unfamilar words in English. If High School graduates were proficient in Latin, scores would be much higher on the SATs.

[Lexinom]

On the West Coat (Seattle and San Francisco) you can find stations in various Asian dialects. In Minnesota I would not be surprised to find a smattering of Hmong and Russian stations.

The fact that non-English speaking Mexican immigrants are here (in many cases illegally) does not, to my thinking, provide sufficient sanction to force my daughter to learn Spanish or else force me to spend extra money to send her to a private school where she can learn Greek, Latin, or German (far more useful in the literary arts and hard sciences). I don't care if they have 200 stations: let them send their kids to private Spanish schools; don't make the rest of us pay for it and thereby reward illegal immigration in the process.