English only — 10/03/09 » Editorials » Daily Independent (Ashland, KY)

Editorials

Discussion

October 2, 2009

English only — 10/03/09

Lack of language skills costly

Anonymous The Daily Independent Fri Oct 02, 2009, 05:54 PM EDT

Most people realize that American students lag far behind the rest of the world when it comes to learning a second language, but far less has been written about how our poor language skills are creating economic disadvantages for U.S. businesses and are raising national security concerns.

Virtually all European and Asian elementary students study a second language, but a new survey by the RAND Corp. found that 97 percent of Ohio and Kentucky students do not because their elementary schools do not offer a foreign language. While many American students take at least a year or two of a foreign language in high school, most do not learn enough to effectively communicate in their second language.

That’s because studies clearly show that the ideal time to learn a second language is during the early elementary years. Language experts say the U.S. approach to language education continues to be too late and too disjointed. Indeed, the most skilled bilingual students in many U.S. elementary schools are foreign-born students who speak English at school and their native language at home.

The Committee for Economic Development has put a price tag on the inadequate language skills and poor cultural competence of the vast majority of American students: $2 billion a year.

While most American educators realize that elementary school is the best time to begin learning a second language, there is no great push to begin teaching foreign languages in the second and third grade. Most teachers likely would say they have more important things to teach children at that age.

Maybe if more Americans realized the negative economic impact of our poor language skills, our schools would begin placing greater emphasis on the need to become bilingual.

Too many Americans are ill-prepared to compete in an increasingly global economy because we don’t speak the language. That needs to change.

Text Only

Editorials

Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.

February 10, 2012
Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.

February 9, 2012
'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.

February 7, 2012
Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.

February 7, 2012
Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.

February 6, 2012
Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.

February 6, 2012
Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.

February 4, 2012
Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.

February 3, 2012
Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.

February 2, 2012
Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.

February 1, 2012
More Editorials Headlines

Editorials

Search Results

Discussion

English only — 10/03/09

Lack of language skills costly

Site Map

Contact Us