Boca Experiment In Teaching Two Languages Deserves Notice

The idea that early childhood is the ideal time to learn a foreign language is scheduled to receive a promising and visionary test next fall at Boca Raton Elementary School.

Principal Alan Goldstein told the Palm Beach County School Board Wednesday that his school will begin teaching students in both English and Spanish starting with kindergarten through second-grade classes.

The 5-to-7-year-old children are scheduled to receive 240 minutes of language instruction each week. Two periods consisting of identical lessons in music and social sciences will be taught in English and Spanish. An after-school program in Spanish also will be offered for third- to fifth-graders.

Goldstein said about one-third of the school’s 343 pupils speak a primary language other than English, mainly Spanish. Two other county elementary schools already offer dual-language instruction _ Gove Elementary in Belle Glade and North Grade Elementary in Lake Worth.

The local bilingual programs are significantly different than the 30-year-old bilingual education scheme that was abolished by 60 percent of California’s voters this week. The result of the referendum has been challenged in federal court.

In California, speakers of languages other than English were entitled to be educated in their native tongues, with the result that millions completed their public educations without ever learning to speak English.

Under the new system, all children will be taught in English, with those who speak little or no English first being placed in a one-year English-immersion program.

The Boca Raton Elementary plan, which has been enthusiastically endorsed by the school’s advisory council of parents, teachers, administrators and business representatives, is intended to foster fluency in both languages by encouraging children to help their peers learn each other’s native language. By the time today’s kindergartners are ready to enter the seventh grade, the school district intends to have advanced dual-language programs in place at several middle schools, too.

The Boca Raton Elementary experiment deserves both attention and support. Its ambitious and worthwhile objective is to enable the youngest generation to understand and communicate with each other better than its predecessors have done. That’s an idea whose acceptance is long overdue in multicultural South Florida.



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