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Parenting is an area that is subject to all sorts of fads and trends, and education is as well. When you combine the emotions and personal insecurities that adults bring to both activities – and anything that involves how to raise young children – it makes for some volatile conversations and strong opinions.
For instance, I can remember when I was in (a private) elementary school, the school did not require teachers to have a teaching degree, but it did use the incredibly rigorous aBeka teaching curriculum, still considered an excellent teaching foundation. So while the teachers were often a grab bag of awful and awesome – some had natural teaching gifts and just had never had the opportunity to be formally educated; some didn’t have the formal teaching education for a reason – the curriculum was fantastic. It was also phonetics-based and put a heavy emphasis on grammar, writing structure, and syntax.
In second grade.
Yes, in second grade I had lessons on English syntax. By fourth grade all assignments in writing and social science classes were in an essay format, and we were regularly required to write everything from creative short fiction and formal non-fiction to multi-page narratives (with proper grammar, sentence structure, and syntax – of course).
It was a strict and excellent curriculum for the humanities and math, but quite weak on science. Three decades later, a career in science remains my “what I want to do in my next life” ambition, and I now make a living as a writer. Writing is so easy for me it is almost like breathing. But I won’t ever be a marine mammal biologist or an audio-lingual specialist. I know: I’ve tried to take the advanced physics and biology classes I would need to start over again in those fields. When pondering a decade of paying to struggle through work I find interesting but extremely difficult, or a decade making a living doing something fun that takes me mere minutes, the choice wasn’t exactly hard. Science is my hobby; writing is my profession.
By the time my younger brother went through (a top) public elementary school, things had swung the other way. Creative writing was all the rage, seen as a “learn by doing” method to helps kids to master English and enjoy writing at the same time. Writing and English had a bad rep; the idea was to make students “like” the subjects again. As a result, science and chemistry got a lot more face time. And… while my younger brother is a witty and succinct writer when he chooses to be, it is not as natural for him. He loathed graduate school with a special passion, and now has a career in business management where he excels.
I’m not arguing that elementary school curricula are the sole determinants of our future selves, but I do think what is emphasized in elementary school can have a powerful impact on what skills become *easy* for us. And considering the amount of things people have to keep up with today, the number of pressures and standards that have to be met, it is hard to resist a profession that requires a skill you find easy. In fact, much of the educational system and “find your perfect career” orientation pushes young adults to pursue their “natural” talents. You know, the ones that were heavily cultivated in elementary school.
These outcomes are why educational trends are so important to watch and monitor. And there are many of them: kids should sit still in class. Kids should allowed to move and run around. Less recess. More recess. Optional recess. Teaching civic education. Abandoning civic education. Local history vs. national history. Teaching humanities as a combined and integrated subject. Teaching subjects individually.
The list goes on and on and on.
The length of that list is why the current obsession with having young children learn a second language amazes me. It is one of the newest trends in elementary education – in Los Angeles there were even schools devoted to complete bilingual immersion in either English and Spanish and English and Japanese. For first graders.
What I never read about in any school board meeting minutes there, nor in many of the arguments for or against so many of these trends, is the full story behind these developmental decisions. We are fortunate enough to live in an age where there is a lot of information available to us, and much of that information – on the surface – can seem complete.
Complete.
As in – wow – this is so amazing – we have to start doing this right now.
But as in all things, the real story behind something is usually long, complex, full of gray areas and unknowns, and not necessarily so persuasive as the 20-second CNN headline version.
Language learning in young children is no exception. Is learning a second language for native speakers of English a good thing?
Yes.
For several reasons.
Is learning a second language all day in first grade a good thing? Well…
How about third grade? Fifth grade? Where can the time and attention given to writing, English grammar, science, history, and math be cut so that another language can be inserted? What does the child gain by adding a new language that outweighs what they lose from other humanities and social science instruction? Education is not completely zero-sum, but the time and attention a fourth grader can give to formal learning each day often is. A curriculum is a set of choices, and carefully crafted ones at that.
And for those schools that try to avoid the zero-sum problem by teaching, for instance, U.S. history in Japanese and earth science in Spanish – what impact does the language choice itself have on the student? English has more than 300,000 words, making nuance and tiny differences easy to articulate. Spanish has about 35,000 words. Can Spanish give the same depth to earth science that English can at the first-grade level? Probably. At the fifth-grade level? Hard to say.
So how to make the right choice for your child in the midst of this trend towards early language instruction?
Go to the full, messy truth about brains. And the use yours to decide for yourself.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
My website has nothing to do with my profession, so don’t be shocked if you ever visit it … just a preface to below
I have been a Elementary & preschool Speech-Language Pathologist for 12 years now, and the question of acquiring a second language always comes up. Really, the big window of opportunity for learning a language… any language, be it your primary language or a second language, is birth to 3. The brain is a sponge and the connections that are made for language learning are at their prime in that short window. It doesn’t mean we are hopeless cases for learning a second language after that. But yes, if you want your child to reap the most benefit from learning another language, the earlier the better. First grade is better than third, which is better than fifth.
There is a ton of research out there that indicates learning another language can support ones ability to develop flexible thinking (if you think about the grammar and syntax for Spanish compared to English – very different)… and this skill of flexible thinking carries over to all subjects of life: science, social studies, math, problem solving, etc.
When ever a an ELL (English language learner) student arrives, parents worry about the toll it may take for their child to maintain their native language as well as learn English. Every SLP I know has always answered with a resounding “yes” to helping their child do both. Not just for their culture, but to help the them develop flexible thinking skills further down the road.
Really, if the child is capable… and willing, and interested I have never seen a negative outcome with learning two languages. Many of those students have gone on to honors programs excelling in all academic areas
As always, its important to consider the individual needs of the student. If they are diagnosed with a language learning delay, obviously throwing another language in there is not at the top of the list.
Continue these types of discussions with your child, teacher, other parents and whomever is developing the curriculum in your schools and see what the general consensus and current research is to help support your desires for the eduction of your child. Never hurts
This is a really thought-provoking post. I tend to think we need to concentrate on what I consider the basics in elementary school. For me, that would be a literature-based curriculum, probably in English.
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Again, nothing to do with my rambling above.
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Kudos to YOUR early language foundation! I am an elementary teacher, and personally, there is nothing more powerful than teaching someone to write. If you can write, you can train yourself to speak, and if you can speak, you can get a respectable job (even if you never have to carry a conversation in the workplace, you DO have to communicate clearly during an interview!)
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