Pressure to compete globally and boost national security is driving interest in less-common languages such as Chinese and Arabic.
Dan Wascoe, Star Tribune Last update: June 05, 2006 – 12:09 AM
School officials in Fridley are bidding adieu to French and ni hao to Chinese.
The shift from a française farewell to a Mandarin hello reflects quickening change in Minnesota's foreign-language agenda. Chinese and Arabic are surfacing alongside more conventional Spanish, French and German. Sometimes Japanese, Ojibwe and Latin are part of the mix.
Latin? "A lot of kids love the incantations from Harry Potter," said Louis Janus, a specialist in less-taught languages at the University of Minnesota. "It's great. Whatever -- if we can get people paying attention."
Spurred by federal and state incentives and business support, some school principals and superintendents are retooling their world-language programs. The result: More languages are being taught in the state's public schools, but the mix is spotty depending on school budgets, parent interest and outside support.
"The whole world language situation in Minnesota is kind of in flux," said Gaelle Berg, world-language specialist for Minneapolis public schools.
Alice Seagren, Minnesota's education commissioner, said the state's world-language offerings "are in very stable, good shape" but that educators should be "more nimble" to handle changing priorities. Learning dialects spoken in India, for example, might be more important than developing a full-fledged Arabic program, she said.
Here are recent signs of change:
• Yinghua Academy, a charter school focusing on Mandarin Chinese, will open for kindergarten through third-grade students this fall in St. Paul.
• The Minnesota Legislature approved Gov. Tim Pawlenty's request for $250,000 to plan a Chinese curriculum and increase the supply of Chinese-language teachers. But it could take years for that curriculum to work its way into the state's schools.
• Business, education and government leaders met last month at the University of Minnesota to talk about how to find, recruit and hold onto trained language teachers. A Mounds Park Academy official will go to China this month to recruit and hire Mandarin Chinese instructors.
• A group of parents, frustrated by the reluctance of Forest Lake school officials to approve a Spanish immersion program, have started a charter elementary school of their own called Lakes International Language Academy. It is implementing the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which emphasizes a cross-cultural perspective and world-language training.
• Concordia Language Villages, a nationally known fixture in northern Minnesota that offers for-credit classes as well as summer immersion camps, will teach Arabic for the first time this summer and is raising funds for a permanent Russian village.
• President Bush, for security reasons, has called for expanded instruction of what he calls critical languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Hindi and Farsi. The Department of Defense intends to spend $750 million to increase the language skills of its employees and provide $25 million for the president's initiative.
In Minnesota, enrollments in the up-and-coming languages are far from challenging those for Spanish, the dominant non-English tongue, or even French and German. But growth in the less-popular languages is accelerating.
Because the "critical languages" have different roots than the Latin that spawned Spanish, French, German, English and other languages, "It will be difficult to learn them," said Ursula Lentz, of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota.
Even after two years of studying a world language, students "generally have not yet arrived at the intermediate level," she said. The turning point comes when students "can begin to create, not just repeat what they've memorized," she said.
Lentz said teachers are being trained to offer a practical, cultural context for their language so that instruction is "not just multiple choice or 'drill and kill.' " In that way, "Students can see the benefits," she said. "They're interested and engaged."
Minnesota, like many states, does not require students to study a foreign language, but many colleges set a minimum of two years' classwork for admission.
Changing the balance
Fridley High School Principal Dave Webb, a former Spanish teacher, said the gradual move from French to Chinese will be part of an effort by the Northwest Suburban Integration District to achieve racial balance in its seven member school districts with the help of a federal grant. Fridley's role is to develop the International Baccalaureate program at the middle-school and high-school levels as a way of "moving students across district boundaries."
Fridley now offers French, German and Spanish and next year will offer first-year Chinese in grades 6 to 9, gradually expanding it to 12th grade as French classes are phased out.
Webb said school officials consulted Medtronic Inc., whose headquarters are in Fridley, and the medical device company suggested Chinese for Fridley schools.
Janice Holter Kittok, a Delano-based consultant to the district, said the changing dynamics have French and German teachers worried about holding on to their programs.
It might not be hard to find proficient speakers of the critical languages, she said, but many will need years of training to learn how to teach. State law provides for temporary waivers of license requirements for community experts to teach in public schools, but it also sets deadlines for earning a teaching license.
Kittok, a former Spanish teacher and president-elect of the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures, also said that because "life happens" and teachers move or change careers, it may be hard to keep a language program alive over a number of years.
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