Are Students Getting Enough Foreign Language Classes?
I had a recent conversation with a relative over teaching foreign language to my kids. This person has a daughter in college who is majoring in languages. I was thoroughly impressed by this young woman.
Then the question came: “How much foreign language have your kids done at this point?” My answer was none. Besides an in-depth study on Latin root words, (which my kids have done) nothing in my homeschooling handbooks told me that my kids needed foreign language before high school. Sure, my kids and I had talked about it, but the decision was always to do it later.
Yes, that conversation caused me to doubt myself and wonder if I had crippled my children in their ability to learn foreign language. After all, the young relative we were talking about had been study languages since grammar school. Of course, she also went to school in an amazing school district. I started to panic, but then stopped and looked around at what other kids were learning.
