CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

[Anonymous]

and there you have it. the voice of reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can I piggy-back on the previous question and ask what exactly the purpose of "immersion" is in high-school? I'm not trying to be difficult, just not seeing it. I mean, I can totally see the purpose of immersion in elementary grades, when immersion serves to acquire more than one language in a quasi-maternal way. But come middle and high school, what sense does it make to teach only 10% in English while living in a country that, after all, whose primary language is English? MS and HS is really not the same thing as ES, when one can in all good conscience rely on other social interactions and playground chatter to let children acquire English. But they won't acquire scientific and statistical concepts in English there, nor will they discuss classics in literature while playing soccer with friends, nor will they read about history at birthday parties. So would immersion in highschool mean that students would discuss American literature in Chinese or Spanish? Should American history be taught in French to high school students? Or maybe it would mean that only 10% of the curriculum would be devoted to anything particularly American?
I am honestly asking myself (an others) these questions. For foreigners scheduled to return to or spend significant time in their lives in their home countries at some point, this would make a lot of sense and they often set up private schools to handle that particular demand (French, German etc.).

If you have to ask what the purpose of language immersion is in high school, then you don't even get the point of a bilingual school. Do you speak any other language besides English? Have you ever studied another language? If so, how well do you speak that language now? Do you think your ease with that language would be greater or less after being exposed to it consistenly, even as a teenager?

Also--America is not the center of the Universe, or even the planet Earth. "Foreigners" aren't the only ones who would benefit from learning another language--can you really be this obtuse? "Devoted to anything remotely 'American' "?