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Monday, March 3, 2008
Kids’ language instruction can’t override basics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My daughter asked me to pop in her CD.
No, she didn’t want to hear the Backyardigans for the umpteenth time. She wanted to practice Chinese from her school-issued CD.
Olivia’s a kindergartner at New Life Academy of Excellence, a charter public school where the often-called “language of the future” is taught. By the end of eight years, Olivia and other charges at the school should be bilingual, director Alphonsa Foward Jr. has said.
On Monday, I read with interest a front-page story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams’ dream. He wants the state to pony up $20 million to pay for foreign language classes in kindergarten in the state. He also would like for the state to put in another $20 million every year to add another grade to the foreign language program.
“The rest of the world teaches a foreign language in the early grades,” said Williams, who speaks Italian, Hebrew and Spanish. “It’s expensive, but I think it’s necessary when we operate in a global environment.”
Chinese is considered a “critical need language.” China, the Asian giant, will be a force to be reckoned with on the political and economic scene. We’ve been told that our children could benefit from knowing how to speak the language and have some sense of the country’s culture and tradition. Maybe so.
In 1990, the state started a pilot foreign language program that was well-received and recognized. It didn’t last, though. No governors or lawmakers advocated putting more money into the budget to take the program statewide.
Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed wiping out the program several times, but lawmakers put the money back in the budget. Last spring, Perdue killed it.
Williams is right. It would be a wonderful and worthy thing if all the state’s kids could start learning a foreign language in kindergarten. But here’s the issue with this pipe dream: the price tag. The kind of foreign language program Williams envisions might cost more than $100 million a year, according to the AJC article.
Talk about bad timing. State lawmakers are having a hard enough time funding basic school programs. They have pledged, and are trying to provide, an extra $140 million to make up for “austerity” spending cuts Perdue recommended in the basic allocation for schools, according to the AJC article.
The state needs to be practical, to teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic in a uniform manner. Equity in public school funding has always been an issue, especially for small, tax-poor communities that can’t make up for cuts in the education budget.
And we want their kindergartners to learn Chinese?
The only reason Olivia’s school can offer Chinese is because it’s a charter school. Those schools receive tax dollars, yet have more latitude than traditional public schools when it comes to what and how they teach.
The state needs to take care of basics first. Then, someday, maybe, we can make foreign language instruction a reality.
Just not today.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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