CPS Foreign Language Classes on the Chopping Block

By Prescott Carlson in News on May 12, 2010 9:00PM

Much to the dismay of parents, Chicago Public School officials have decided to stop providing foreign language studies in 25 elementary schools and two high schools as another band-aid on the district's hemorrhaging budget. The canceling of "world language" programs in magnet schools will reportedly save the CPS $3.5 million, of which they'll need every penny as the State of Illinois is slashing education funding by $1.3 billion next year.

The Sun-Times reports that over a hundred parents and teachers gathered Tuesday in front of Hyde Park's William H. Ray Elementary, one of the schools affected by the cuts. Ironically, Ray bills itself as a "multi-ethnic, multi-cultural elementary school." The theme of the protest was the importance of kids knowing multiple languages, with one parent quoted as saying it makes them "more competetive in the world" and that "in another 20 or 30 years, the population that speaks Spanish is going to be dominant in the United States, so knowing Spanish is very important."

Despite the wealth of commenters on the S-T piece crowing about how this is AMURIKA and we speak ENGLIGH in AMURIKA, it's hard to argue that foreign language studies are a bad thing. Not only does it broaden future career opportunities, but it's simply a great brain exercise as well, increasing memory and critical thinking abilities. And those couple of French classes in high school aren't going to cut it -- kids tend to be able to pick up foreign languages more easily when they're younger, and an "uninterrupted sequence of foreign language study in grades K-12" is ideal for being able to communicate in another language beyond asking where the library is.