Language instruction in primary and secondary education

[phk]

In many developed countries, such as France, Germany, and Japan, students start learning a foreign language in school from as early as kindergarten level (and I don't mean hour-a-week Spanish, I mean something where one actually remembers the language). Thus, by the time they graduate high school, most students are fluent or at least functional in their native language and one or two other languages, often including English.

Now, it is true that English is becoming a lingua franca. However, I think foreign languages are still a useful asset, for tourism, international relations, and so on, and indeed there is evidence to suggest that learning another language increases one's ability to learn one's own faster and better.

So, what would you people think about starting daily or near-daily foreign-language instruction for all elementary school students beginning from the first grade, expandable to a second language in junior high or high school? And what language options ought to be offered?

[phk]

The only problems would be to find enough qualified teachers and what would be removed from the curriculum in order to make it possible.  That said, I’d like it if Spanish were a universal elementary school requirement in the US with other languages being options, but there is no other language that would be as useful, with the possible exception of Canadian French in the northeast and upper midwest.

We can pay for retraining teachers and more by eliminating the eleventh and twelfth grades for 40-60% of students.

So if you pass that before 11th grade, no need to take two more years.

My proposal would be more along the lines of a university-track sorting examination. Two tests, administered in sixth and eighth grades, followed with consultations if requested to determine track (ideally, except in very clear-cut cases no child would be forced into a track against the child's or the parents' will).

Those who are willing and able to head to university will take all twelve years of grade school. Thooe wishing to get on the job track will graduate after tenth. Hopefully, this will decrease the amount of delinquency and dropouts in students who are no longer getting anything from school.

The tenth grade and the year after graduation would be an internship/apprenticeship program, well-formalized - not like the spotty, easily-cut budget afterthoughts of today's system. Students who aren't pursuing a university degree but want education beyond apprenticeship could attend a government trade school or some such thing.

Those schools (basically today's community colleges) would also double as places for students misfiled or changing their minds after graduation to take the eleventh-tweflth sequence and prepare for a university education. Ideally, students completing tenth grade int he job track and immediately wishing to go to eleventh would be able to continue in the normal grade-school program for that.

Thoughts?

[phk]

I think foreign languages are still a useful asset, for tourism, international relations, and so on, and indeed there is evidence to suggest that learning another language increases one's ability to learn one's own faster and better.