Does any of this represent interesting trends?i think the trend is as wonderful as it is essential. unless things have changed since i was in high school (over a decade ago), US'n students are required to take only 2 years of foreign language, and short of private schools (my own children are required to begin a 5 year course of latin in the fifth grade, but this is certainly not the case in public schools), there is absolutely *no opportunity for the acquisition of a foreign language at the elementary school level, when students' facility for reception and retaining of said knowledge is arguably higher than at older ages.
one would think that the powers that be in USn education would want to more closely tailor the language education standards to the [rapidly] changing demographics. seems it's time that we wake up and smell the cat food... i'm not sure i understand what it is that folks are skeered of; the kids in europe do just fine with their language requirements at an early age. unless perhaps the problem is that we simply don't have the teachers? god forbid we have to model ourselves after many of the asian countries, and hire *foreigners* to teach our kids; we might unwittingly produce a whole generation of useful citizens
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FWIW, though i speak only kitchen spanish, and have forgotten most of the french i learned, my kids are used to my esperanto and respond in kind (they, however, have the advantage of growing up with spanish-speaking nannies).
