Given the pay differential by so many companies for being bi-lingual, it doesn’t make sense not to be, if you have the opportunity. Bi-lingual education is not a problem, it is an opportunity for teachers and students. If they don’t believe it they should check the price on foreign language pre-schools in New York and LA. People are spending thousands a year so their 4-year-old can learn Chinese. It isn’t that difficult to have an adult master elementary school Spanish if they have ever mastered a second language.
In my local district we have Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Serb, Polish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai speaking kids. While there are “assistants” [military wives] to help them, their parents have to depend on a couple of churches for help with English, because there are no English as a second language programs. It’s stupid.
Andante, how about being required to fill out minority employment surveys for the Feds while being prohibited by the state from asking employees any questions about ethnicity. These people are seriously messed up. If you are in certain positions in a school you get to select which laws you are going to violate, because you can’t do your job without violating the law.
In the old New York education law the Spring Break was called the Planting Period for years. The original timing of the school year was based on agricultural needs in the states.
]]>Bryan, the last time I remember farming making a real impact on the schedule was when I lived in the eastern part of N.C. and tobacco was king. The high schools couldn’t start their football season until mid-September because of the harvest.
]]>~ Melting in New England
]]>John I went to military schools on Eglin which use a standard curriculum and Okaloosa is still a reasonable system because a large percentage of teachers are military wives and the school population doesn’t remain static, but many of the “enrichment programs” are gone. The damn FCAT is the worse idea ever. Okaloosa has an “A+” school system that makes it average in much of the rest of country. I hate to think what it costs to air condition the schools for the month of August.
As my Mother mentioned tonight, after riding to school on bus without air conditioning the kids are not apt to learn much for the first two hours.
That makes sense to me, Andante. They could cancel the Spring Break; it’s not like many of those kids have to help with planting any more, the original reason for the break.
]]>(Just joking, Phinky and Bryan.)
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