The recent re-emphasis on being a monolingual society in America has been very disturbing to me. It goes against my interest in the multicultural world I live in and the importance of teaching my son to appreciate the many people’s of the world. Language is a part of cultural.
I think this emphasis on being a monolingual society is not only harmful socially, putting a stigma on languages other than English, but can also have economic implications. Our children are growing up in an ever increasing global market. We get goods from around the world and can catch a plane to visit just about anywhere in the world in a moments notice. By teaching our children another language they will be better equipped to survive in the global marketplace that will only become more important with time.
I will make sure that my son not only embraces his culture lingistically but also explore the cultures and languages of others so that he is not only able to communicate with the many immigrent neighbors he’s blessed with but also for survival in the global marketplace. Right now, he’s a bilingual 5 year old that aspires to learn Chinese. His father has a caucasian father and a Mexican mother. As a result he is bilingual himself and has talked to our son in Spanish exclusively from the day of his birth.
This decision to make our son bilingual was made before our sons birth. It was important to both of us as we both have spanish speaking mothers. So dad only speaks to him in spanish, we have an exchange student from spain living ith us for a year and he attend spanish immersion school once a week. As a result of having s close friend that has a mother who’s fluent in Chinese and a really friendly neighbor that is from China, he’s been asking to learn Chinese. We hope to both learn Chinese next year using the “Better Chinese” curriculum.
Today, was Spanish day for us. The Little Man (LM), went to his weekly Spanish school for 3 hours this morning. We joined this Spanish Immersion Preschool Program in February. It’s not specifically for homeschoolers but our teacher plans to integrate K for us and her daughter who’s skipping K for next year. This has been great for him. His dad has spoken to him in Spanish (he is fluent) since the day he was born without fail. Mom, on the other hand, is far from fluent, but the person he spends most the time with. We were hesitant about the cost. Dad was not convinced that just 3 hours per week with a small group of Spanish speaking peers (the dominant language of well over 1/2 the class of 8 is Spanish) would make a difference. You see, LM understands Spanish very well but his speaking ability has been delayed. He predominately gets his Spanish only from Dad. We did get an exchange student from Spain to help facilitate the growth of LM’s Spanish skills. We saw a little progress but she mostly speaks to him in English. The real benefit their has been the cultural exchange and experience of having an older sister. We love having her around.