Global language on the way to elementary schools

It takes the knowledge of 3,000 characters to become fluent in what is one of the fastest growing languages in the business world.

This combined with the opportunity to pick up a large federal grant are the reason North Middlesex Regional School District officials hope to offer Chinese to all fourth graders in 2007.

"We've began in discussion a longtime," said Superintendent James McCormick.

School officials told the school committee they would like to take advantage of the federal foreign language assistance program, which is offering school districts $100,000 for three years, said Julie Bressler, the district's world language curriculum coordinator, during presented the proposal to the regional school committee on May 22.

The federal government is encouraging the study of Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Indic, Iran and Tukic languages through these grants.

These languages are very different than English and the Romance or Germanic language usually taught in high schools.

"I am going to purpose that program start in the elementary school," said Bressler.

She said the need to start the program at either the fourth or third grade level is so that children become familiar with the variety of characters and tonal voices changes with the language as earlier as possible.

Associate Superintendent Mary Waight said the program would grow as part of the curriculum as the students advanced through the school system.

"At (the elementary) level it will be part of the program," she said. "This would be an opportunity for every student."

Waight said as students advanced into the high school they would have the choice of other foreign languages courses as well. The high and middle schools curriculums offers the chance to take French and Spanish, while only the high school offers Latin as a subject matter.

Bressler said there will be some struggles as the district tries to implement this course of study.

"It's going to be difficult to get teachers (through the certification)," she said.

The language program will focus on Mandarin, which is the most commonly spoken of the Chinese dialects.

"I'd like to see us be successful," she said.

So there would be work between the teachers and administrators over the next year to bring this into the curriculum.

School committee members only expressed concerns about a lack of continuity in the federal grant programs.

"I am very hesitant on relying on the federal grants," said committee member Frederick Wheeler.

McCormick said because of the focus on national security and the global financial impacts he expects the federal government to fund this program for the next 10 years.

Bressler told school committee members that students in China begin studying English in the third grade.

"That means there are more people in China studying English then there are in (American) school systems," she said.

Caitlyn Kelleher can be reached at (978) 827-3386, ext. 15, or e-mail: caitlynkelleher@ aol.com