Options for Language Instruction after DCPS Cuts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

Is it? Shows us the line item in the DCPS budget where these teaching positions are funded by external allocations. We will wait.

Not sure how it is ignorant to point out that Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language in the world.

The value in studying Mandarin is self-evident. The value of Italian much less so.

Lazy and ignorant. DCPS is one of several partnerships that the Italian embassy has around the country to strengthen Italian language promote kids sitting for the AP Italian exam. They signed an MOU with DCPS just before Covid. Also, Italian is one of the most studied languages in the world. So your value barometer is not particularly relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy Middle in Ward 2 cut Mandarin but kept Spanish and Italian.

Madness. 1.8 billion Chinese in the next superpower and they kept...Italian? Where's the vision on DCPS' part?

So ignorant on your part. And the Italian programming is partially funded by Italian grant program

Is it? Shows us the line item in the DCPS budget where these teaching positions are funded by external allocations. We will wait.

Not sure how it is ignorant to point out that Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language in the world.

The value in studying Mandarin is self-evident. The value of Italian much less so.

Lazy and ignorant. DCPS is one of several partnerships that the Italian embassy has around the country to strengthen Italian language promote kids sitting for the AP Italian exam. They signed an MOU with DCPS just before Covid. Also, Italian is one of the most studied languages in the world. So your value barometer is not particularly relevant.

An MOU just before COVID? As in, 5 years ago? And what became of that MOU? Tellingly you have absolutely no information to share on how the Italian government is subsidizing Italian instruction in DCPS. Probably because it isn’t.

And it’s not like a subsidy is a particularly good use for saddling young children with the study of a language that is, for all intents and purposes, professionally useless.

Italian could be “one of the most” studied languages in the world, depending of course on one’s definition of most. In rankings of global students, it seems to rank seventh, behind English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, German, and Japanese.

I learned both Japanese and German in high school and both were a complete waste of time. And both languages are a heck of a lot more useful than Italian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. Unpopular opinion but most of these kids aren’t going to learn enough Mandarin to do anything with it anyway. In fact most kids don’t learn enough of a second language in the US (in school) for it to be useful.

None of them has a chance of it becoming "useful" if they don't learn it in the first place.

But there is so much more education involved in learning a language than it being useful for a job or something. Grammar, vocabulary, memorization, geography, history, comparative arts, literature, and culture, etc etc. are all part of learning a language. And it's good for the brain.

Everyone learning Spanish is what's "meh." It's a good language to learn, but it hardly makes us educated in aggregate.

You can smell the Maga on you a mile away.

What an odd response. Just in case your reading comprehension is the issue, note that I did not say learning Spanish was "meh." What I said is that *everyone* learning the same, one foreign language -- ie, Spanish -- is bad. There should be diversity in the languages we study or else, in aggregate, we are a narrow-minded community.

Spanish and Italian are about as similar as languages can be. It makes no sense for DCPS to be offering both in parallel, particularly at the exclusion of the likes of Mandarin. Yet here we are.

[Anonymous]

It makes no sense to me for DCPS to be cutting languages, period. They should be adding, not cutting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It makes no sense to me for DCPS to be cutting languages, period. They should be adding, not cutting.

Good idea. Pay more taxes!

[Anonymous]

I think that any one who thinks that middle and high school language programs are going to get your kid a job or fluency are misjudging.

I think a good MS/HS language program introduces kids to a foreign language and gets them hooked on language learning, but you can seriously learn as much Spanish or French in a year on Duolingo as you can in four years of high school. Even AP Spanish is nowwhere near fluency.

The people I know who became bi or tri-lingual through education (as opposed to having cultural or family backgrounds) did it through college and grad school, and almost exclusively through immersion study abroad experiences. Long ago I attended a high school that sent sophomores to France and Spain for a year—almost all of the people who did the program live overseas and speak at least three languages. But that's not a systemic way.

As long as a school HAS a language program and as long as the teachers are encouraging and engaging, I don't think it really matters the extent of the language taught or the actual language being taught. I'd rather my kid pick up a smattering but go off to college with an interest in taking serious language courses, doing study abroad, etc. than go to a MS because it has the most elaborate set of foreign languages on offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that any one who thinks that middle and high school language programs are going to get your kid a job or fluency are misjudging.

I think a good MS/HS language program introduces kids to a foreign language and gets them hooked on language learning, but you can seriously learn as much Spanish or French in a year on Duolingo as you can in four years of high school. Even AP Spanish is nowwhere near fluency.

The people I know who became bi or tri-lingual through education (as opposed to having cultural or family backgrounds) did it through college and grad school, and almost exclusively through immersion study abroad experiences. Long ago I attended a high school that sent sophomores to France and Spain for a year—almost all of the people who did the program live overseas and speak at least three languages. But that's not a systemic way.

As long as a school HAS a language program and as long as the teachers are encouraging and engaging, I don't think it really matters the extent of the language taught or the actual language being taught. I'd rather my kid pick up a smattering but go off to college with an interest in taking serious language courses, doing study abroad, etc. than go to a MS because it has the most elaborate set of foreign languages on offer.

I disagree. Of course it matters the language being taught. Spanish and Mandarin are the top 2 most spoken language in the world followed by English.

You are not going to be pretty good conversationally by starting a language in college and frankly lots of kids don’t have the time in college and beyond to supplement outside of school, do study abroad,etc… Starting a language in MS and continuing it to college can get you good enough to speak and read. My kid isn’t doing mandarin but terribly short sighted of DCPS to cut that over Italian

Lastly as others have mentioned, you don’t need fluency to find the language useful in a practical manner. I work in the medical field and can’t tell you the hundreds of times I wished I had taken Spanish instead of French. My colleagues who speak Spanish are not fluent but don’t need to rely on translators to get by with getting the info they need. Yes, we have to use mandarin translators too. If you can communicate in Spanish or mandarin, you have a huge advantage if you are in any service industry such as medicine, law, business, etc…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that any one who thinks that middle and high school language programs are going to get your kid a job or fluency are misjudging.

I think a good MS/HS language program introduces kids to a foreign language and gets them hooked on language learning, but you can seriously learn as much Spanish or French in a year on Duolingo as you can in four years of high school. Even AP Spanish is nowwhere near fluency.

The people I know who became bi or tri-lingual through education (as opposed to having cultural or family backgrounds) did it through college and grad school, and almost exclusively through immersion study abroad experiences. Long ago I attended a high school that sent sophomores to France and Spain for a year—almost all of the people who did the program live overseas and speak at least three languages. But that's not a systemic way.

As long as a school HAS a language program and as long as the teachers are encouraging and engaging, I don't think it really matters the extent of the language taught or the actual language being taught. I'd rather my kid pick up a smattering but go off to college with an interest in taking serious language courses, doing study abroad, etc. than go to a MS because it has the most elaborate set of foreign languages on offer.

I disagree. Of course it matters the language being taught. Spanish and Mandarin are the top 2 most spoken language in the world followed by English.

You are not going to be pretty good conversationally by starting a language in college and frankly lots of kids don’t have the time in college and beyond to supplement outside of school, do study abroad,etc… Starting a language in MS and continuing it to college can get you good enough to speak and read. My kid isn’t doing mandarin but terribly short sighted of DCPS to cut that over Italian

Lastly as others have mentioned, you don’t need fluency to find the language useful in a practical manner. I work in the medical field and can’t tell you the hundreds of times I wished I had taken Spanish instead of French. My colleagues who speak Spanish are not fluent but don’t need to rely on translators to get by with getting the info they need. Yes, we have to use mandarin translators too. If you can communicate in Spanish or mandarin, you have a huge advantage if you are in any service industry such as medicine, law, business, etc…

You didn't read anything I wrote. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. Unpopular opinion but most of these kids aren’t going to learn enough Mandarin to do anything with it anyway. In fact most kids don’t learn enough of a second language in the US (in school) for it to be useful.

None of them has a chance of it becoming "useful" if they don't learn it in the first place.

But there is so much more education involved in learning a language than it being useful for a job or something. Grammar, vocabulary, memorization, geography, history, comparative arts, literature, and culture, etc etc. are all part of learning a language. And it's good for the brain.

Everyone learning Spanish is what's "meh." It's a good language to learn, but it hardly makes us educated in aggregate.

You can smell the Maga on you a mile away.

What an odd response. Just in case your reading comprehension is the issue, note that I did not say learning Spanish was "meh." What I said is that *everyone* learning the same, one foreign language -- ie, Spanish -- is bad. There should be diversity in the languages we study or else, in aggregate, we are a narrow-minded community.

More like- spanish is already part of your community but you’re too racist to see that.

And yes, you can learn more than 2. I speak several. But I’m sure you don’t and can’t.