Second language instruction in my old middle and high school, way back when.

[randomness]

My old middle school started us on a second language in sixth grade. This was pretty good for the time. You had the choice of French or Spanish. In ninth grade, when we got to high school, they added German and Latin.

It struck me today that this was an odd choice of languages for a town that had a plurality, if not a majority, of Italian-Americans. If you went by ethnicity, I'd think you'd have gone with Italian and Irish as your elective languages. (Nearly all the Italian, Irish, and Polish kids were being raised Catholic, so that might have had something to do with why they offered Latin.)

Clearly there were practical issues. Finding teachers would have been harder. Most of the students were at least a generation or two away from actually using the language at home. Generally, the Italian kids I grew up with couldn't manage any more than a few curses in Italian, and that only in Neapolitan dialect. So you'd have to deal with the whole Neapolitan vs. standard Italian issue. Some kids actually did speak it at home, so you'd have to produce skill-appropriate classes for them as well.

And back then, there was still some sentiment among immigrants that when you came to America you got rid of your old language as a part of assimilation rather than hone it as another useful skill. So it's certainly possible that there wasn't anywhere near as much interest as there would be today.

But thinking back from the early 21st century at the apathetic kids in my classes, I can't help thinking you'd have gotten more engagement if you'd actually offered languages that the kids cared about, as opposed to teaching them languages that some upper-middle class people considered "cultured".

At least we had second language instruction.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

My high school had Spanish, French, German Italian Latin Japanese.

My friends have first graders learning Chinese, so the whole family has to.

[storyjen.livejournal.com]

That would be us! (Hi!) We're having lots of fun with the Chinese so far!

My town had French, Spanish, and Latin at the middle school level, and added German, Russian, and Chinese at the high school level. There may have been Italian too, I'm not quite sure.

My brother took Chinese his last year of high school, purely because he hadn't been doing well in Spanish but was counseled that he needed another year of language - and it changed his life. Because he took it in high school, he continued it in college. Because he took it in college, he met lots of friends who were taking it. Because his friends were interested in a Chinese semester abroad, he applied for that too, and got in. He ended up double-majoring in Psychology and Chinese, living in China for a long time, going to grad school for Chinese Political Science, and now lives in Singapore with his Chinese wife and his bilingual kids.

I, on the other hand, took Latin, which was awesome for vocabulary and spelling, and French, which I now use not at all. How I wish I had taken Spanish!

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

:boggle:
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