Reply to MacArthur High School opens 11 weeks from today

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There will only be 250 kids the first year, so they don't have to finish anything.

Weird that the only 2 languages offered for the first few years will be Spanish and Italian.[/quote]

They should offer a placement exam for Italian speakers as an admissions preference.[b] It's crazy that your only option for Italian in DC is Hardy/MacArthur. [/b][/quote]

Or crazy that any school offers it?

What happened to Chinese?  Will MacArthur not have it?[/quote]

How bizarre that you think it's crazy that DC would have schools that offer it -it is a major world language - and widely offered in NY, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. The Italian embassy gives grants for these programs...it is another failure of DC that you don't have options throughout the city for languages, including a path to bilingual MS/HS for everyone who wants that. [/quote]

Major, as in "about 20th most-spoken" according to Babbel.

Which is why it is an odd choice for 1 of 2 languages.

Hardy also offers Mandarin, which is the 2nd most spoken, and is educationally very different than Spanish and Italian (which are linguistically close).

Mandarin makes more sense as a priority.[/quote] Why? Because you think little Jagger is going to get into Harvard because he took two sections of Mandarin - a much harder language to learn - in MS? Look at the YY threads - your kid will never speak Chinese well if they start in MS.  Italian is pretty important for musicians, art history, literature, philosophy, etc. But you knew that already. [/quote]

NP and I think studying any foreign language is better than studying no foreign language; it’s good for the brain, and it leads to better understanding of English mechanics, as well. If Italian is what’s available, I’m glad something is available.

But if you’re going to offer only a couple of languages, it would make sense for them to be broadly spoken. I’d argue for Arabic over Chinese. But if you’re looking at Romance languages, French makes much more sense than Italian.[/quote]

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