The younger, the better

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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The Cedar Rapids Community School District deserves praise for adding Spanish language instruction to its elementary school curriculum, starting in the fall.

Kindergartners and first-graders will get 30 minutes of foreign language instruction every three days from four newly hired teachers. Eventually, the district plans to expand the program through fifth grade. Elementary students learn languages more easily than older students, so it makes sense to start in elementary grades.

A tall stack of studies over the last three decades has shown multiple benefits of foreign language instruction for young students, beyond the value of learning about a new language and culture. Foreign language learning helps build cognitive and problem-solving skills and actually results in higher achievement in other subject areas, including English and math.

One study of 13,2000 Louisiana elementary school students, for example, found that kids who took a foreign language scored higher in English on standardized tests.

“We're seeing that,” said Nancy Gardner, elementary principal at West Liberty, home to an ambitious dual-language program that teaches its students in English for half of the day and in Spanish for the other half. The program's first participants graduate this spring. And there's a long waiting list of families seeking admission to the program.

Gardner recounted the words of one parent with a child in the program: “When my child graduates, two doors will be open instead of one. Our kids are going to be citizens of the world.”

The Cedar Rapids program won't be as immersive as West Liberty's, but it's a good start. And the district is bucking a disturbing trend.

According to a 2008 nationwide survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics, the number of elementary and middle schools offering foreign language programs fell from 31 percent to 25 percent between 1997 and 2008. And students attending private elementary schools were far more likely to receive that instruction than students in public schools, where just 15 percent of elementary schools offered a foreign language program.

One-third of the schools surveyed reported that cuts were made in foreign languages to shift more resources into subject areas that are the focus of standardized testing under No Child Left Behind.

Cedar Rapids has decided, wisely, that the benefits of teaching Spanish are worth reallocating increasingly scarce resources. The core role of a public school is to prepare its students to live and thrive in the world beyond the classroom.

Faced with a demographically changing nation and an economy that's global in scope, learning a language is not a frill. It's a necessity.

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