This Is Good News
Few things will rile up a conversation quite like the question "what should kids learn?"
To some, "the basics" - reading, writing, math, and fairly straightforward history - are the focus. Others favor a less-focused curriculum focused on developing broader thinking.
My own beliefs are less than completely traditional - but whether you send your kids to a catholic military school or a curriculum-free "unschool" like the Sudbury School, I believe that one of the most important facets of a real education (as opposed to "schooling") is learning a foreign language. The benefits, even beyond the obvious, are immense; you can not learn a foreign language without learning about the culture - and nothing lances the boil of "multiculturalism" like actually understanding foreign culture! Foreign languages also have a demonstrable ability to help kids in, believe it or not, math; the logical pathways through the brain that help analyze and retain language are the same ones that support higher-order logic like math. Kids who start in foreign language immersion programs from kindergarten on up have documentably higher math scores as a group than kids who go to traditional schools.
And of course learning a language gives a student the abiliity to understand the world around him or her more broadly; it may be possible to find a bilingual bigot, but you have to look a lot harder than in the general population.
And so while I am deeply pessimistic about the future of public compulsory education in Minnesota, I think this story notes a praiseworthy trend:
Spurred by federal and state incentives and business support, some school principals and superintendents are retooling their world-language programs. The result: More languages are being taught in the state's public schools, but the mix is spotty depending on school budgets, parent interest and outside support.
"The whole world language situation in Minnesota is kind of in flux," said Gaelle Berg, world-language specialist for Minneapolis public schools.
Alice Seagren, Minnesota's education commissioner, said the state's world-language offerings "are in very stable, good shape" but that educators should be "more nimble" to handle changing priorities. Learning dialects spoken in India, for example, might be more important than developing a full-fledged Arabic program, she said.
Back to facts; among the first things that school districts gutted during the "budget cuts" after 2002 were language programs. I suspect the availability of federal money has at least as much to do with the renaissance and refocus of language programs as their pedogogical value.
Any port in a storm, I guess.
(And I wish my high school would've had Russian...)
Posted by Mitch at
June 6, 2006 07:48 AM
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Step 1: stop teaching French in schools. 30 years and it will be as relevant as Latin. Actually less so; Latin at least is used in scientific classification systems. French will become known as "the language of menus."
Posted by: chriss at June 6, 2006 10:57 AMFrench class did, however, have quite a favorable girl/boy ratio of about 22 to 2. So that's a plus.
Hippie schools, languages other than English? This is gonna get you purged from the Party for sure!
Posted by: angryclown at June 6, 2006 11:27 AMSimple fact: A population that actually thinks critically is a population that votes conservative.
Posted by: mitch at June 6, 2006 12:00 PMDude, you still got it. That joke made me snort Pepsi out my nose!
Posted by: angryclown at June 6, 2006 12:12 PM(mitch nods obligingly, knowing his work is done)
Posted by: mitch at June 6, 2006 12:31 PMFinally, a topic that I can speak almost intelligibly about (ending in a preposition may not be the best way to start this discussion.)
My degree is in history, with a 2nd teaching field in English (24 hrs undergrad) and a minor in math. I started a masters in English, and got 9 hr of history and 6 hr of English. Confused, yes, but interesting. The most beneficial part of English were the linguistic courses, which I took whenever possible. I learned more about human learning in the linguistics courses than in my education courses.
Some interesting things that run very contrary to modern educational "theory":
From birth to puberty, children have the ability to absorb "facts", like foreign languages and arithmetic (not math). For foreign languages, the ability means to process languaged learned before puberty as a native, meaning that a person thinks in the language that they are going to speak in (ending in another preposition). Part of that means building a large vocabulary. It is difficult to expand a person's functional vocabulary after their teenage years. Functional means the words we think. Learning a large pre-teen vocabulary in any langauge increases our abilities in that language, foreign or domestic. We will then think with a larger vocabulary rather than translate small words into larger words, or fewer words into more words. Yes, we can expand our vocabulary just like we can learn a foreign language, but we have to "translate" our thoughts just like we have to translate our English into another language.
However, children lack the ability to think critically before puberty. Higher math is difficult. Arithmetic, absorption or (gasp) memorization of math facts like multiplication tables is easy for pre-teens, algebra is not.
The additional kicker is that developing a large vocabulary pays off in math after puberty. The larger or vocabulary, the better our critical thinking.
Education in America is not education, it is social engineering and babysitting. Very expensive babysitting.
Posted by: Scott at June 6, 2006 12:59 PMI personally think that every high school should make basic formal logic a requrement for graduation. Not only is it generally more useful than algebra, but it would cut down the rolls of Democratic voters dramatically...
Posted by: Jay Reding at June 6, 2006 04:05 PMInteresting claim, from the party that believes Saddam was behind 9/11, evolution is a bunch of lies and that Jesus loves rich white a55holes more than other people.
Posted by: angryclown at June 6, 2006 04:34 PMI'm trying to think of a single conservative I know that "believes" any such thing.
Oh, and I have a five words for you: Marsha, Jody, Barb and Fran.
'nuff said.
Posted by: mitch at June 6, 2006 04:53 PMAssclown says:
"That joke made me snort Pepsi out my nose!"
And I bet you poured your strained peas & carrots medley on your head, and threw your sippy cup on the floor too didn't you?
Sure you did.
Posted by: swiftee at June 6, 2006 05:23 PMRight before I emptied my diaper on your head, not-so-swiftee.
Posted by: angryclown at June 6, 2006 05:51 PMTry reading something by or about Rafe Esquith. Mr Esquith teaches in an inner city school in LA
Posted by: MOM at June 6, 2006 08:28 PM