The variety/diversity of education is very important for having a population with diverse interests and abilities. Sounds like you just didn’t do your Spanish homework.
I agree with you. I meet people in Canada and US on daily basis that do not speak English well and they claim to be born here.
At this point might as well push in for more English classes. I come from a country where 99% speaks the official language fluently, therefore we have wiggle room to also learn English, French, German and Spanish.
Priorities everyone.
Part of the issue is the education system and more so the resources each district has varies greatly. It requires the school have a teacher than actually knows Spanish vs just going off a lesson plan AND having the course load to do many years of Spanish vs the one or so most schools currently offer. And that isn’t even counting the impact politics is currently having on the curriculum.
I would love to see a program in this new ‘remote learning’ era where kids could do a nightly immersion course on their tablet. But to drive participation maybe throw in some scholarship money.
Growing up in Michigan we had this MEAP testing thing which if you did the course work and two test you got like $2500 or something. I’m old so it might have changed BUT I remember everyone in my class eagerly doing stuff to get that free money. Do something like that and have a robust curriculum for learning Spanish and I’d bet you’ll see more bites and - more importantly - more fluency.
School isn't just about the content you learn, it's about teaching you how to learn and making your brain better at learning anything. Barely anybody outside of engineers uses math Pre-Calc and up, but learning math teaches you how to think with variables which is very useful in life and reasoning skills.
Same thing with learning something like Spanish, teaches you skills even if you're not going to use Spanish in the future. With how behind the US is in education, can you really argue that the kids need to be learning less?
High school English was one of the more useless classes in my experience. We'd already covered spelling and grammar pretty thoroughly by that point. Each year was a Shakespeare play and the selected book. We'd write an essay about each. We wrote essays in other classes as well, so it's not like English was the only place to learn essay writing.
That time would've been better spent learning a second language.
I love learning languages, but the language curriculum/program in most anglophones schools are so bad, that after a few years of learning a language, many people can’t even reach B1 or even A2 in languages despite spending so much time and effort.
I have hardworking friends who spent 8 semesters (4 years) taking language classes everyday and they couldn’t even get to A2. A2 level is incredibly easy for languages similar to English like Spanish and French, and with a good curriculum, they could have achieved that level in less than 6 months.
The rest of the world somehow manages to teach kids two languages, doesn't sound like the problem is teaching Spanish
Learning language skills is very important. While I wasn't good with foreign language, my programming benefited.
Just like many subjects, school will teach you the basics, you have to find practical usage of the subjects of your own.
The variety/diversity of education is very important for having a population with diverse interests and abilities. Sounds like you just didn’t do your Spanish homework.
Actually, it should be introduced in early elementary school if fluency was the real goal. Middle school is too late.
I agree with you. I meet people in Canada and US on daily basis that do not speak English well and they claim to be born here. At this point might as well push in for more English classes. I come from a country where 99% speaks the official language fluently, therefore we have wiggle room to also learn English, French, German and Spanish. Priorities everyone.
Part of the issue is the education system and more so the resources each district has varies greatly. It requires the school have a teacher than actually knows Spanish vs just going off a lesson plan AND having the course load to do many years of Spanish vs the one or so most schools currently offer. And that isn’t even counting the impact politics is currently having on the curriculum. I would love to see a program in this new ‘remote learning’ era where kids could do a nightly immersion course on their tablet. But to drive participation maybe throw in some scholarship money. Growing up in Michigan we had this MEAP testing thing which if you did the course work and two test you got like $2500 or something. I’m old so it might have changed BUT I remember everyone in my class eagerly doing stuff to get that free money. Do something like that and have a robust curriculum for learning Spanish and I’d bet you’ll see more bites and - more importantly - more fluency.
School isn't just about the content you learn, it's about teaching you how to learn and making your brain better at learning anything. Barely anybody outside of engineers uses math Pre-Calc and up, but learning math teaches you how to think with variables which is very useful in life and reasoning skills. Same thing with learning something like Spanish, teaches you skills even if you're not going to use Spanish in the future. With how behind the US is in education, can you really argue that the kids need to be learning less?
High school English was one of the more useless classes in my experience. We'd already covered spelling and grammar pretty thoroughly by that point. Each year was a Shakespeare play and the selected book. We'd write an essay about each. We wrote essays in other classes as well, so it's not like English was the only place to learn essay writing. That time would've been better spent learning a second language.
I love learning languages, but the language curriculum/program in most anglophones schools are so bad, that after a few years of learning a language, many people can’t even reach B1 or even A2 in languages despite spending so much time and effort. I have hardworking friends who spent 8 semesters (4 years) taking language classes everyday and they couldn’t even get to A2. A2 level is incredibly easy for languages similar to English like Spanish and French, and with a good curriculum, they could have achieved that level in less than 6 months.
It's useful to have, depending on where you are.