Fred Baker's comments were not funny to my family - our son's in the Amigos first grade. Why would blowing up something and making it a festival with balloons be funny?
But as to the program itself, much of what I would say has already been said by Amigos grads and other parents, but the one thing that I notice is that Mr. Baker thinks that the English-speaking parents are out to get our kids the benefit of speaking Spanish but that it will be at the expense of the Spanish native speakers not learning English. Does he imply that our English-speaking kids are capable of learning in two languages but that the Spanish-speaking kids are not? Why does he think that the Spanish speakers in the program can't learn English but doesn't doubt that the English kids can learn Spanish? The parents of the Amigos students realize that learning two languages if valuable to BOTH Spanish and English. And to the woman who questioned, why Spanish and not Chinese? The kids are taking Chinese - once per week at the youngest grades. Those who continue throughout their primary educations can qualify to go after 8th grade on a trip to China. English-only educations in today's multi-cultural world is short-sighted. Europeans, Asians, Africans - all are educated in multi-languages from the time that they are little. Perhaps rather than blowing up Amigos' program, we might think to expand other schools' language instruction and offer educations in MORE languages so that our students will be prepared for the global society that they will be living in by the time they graduate.
Fred Baker's comments were not funny to my family - our son's in the Amigos first grade. Why would blowing up something and making it a festival with balloons be funny?
But as to the program itself, much of what I would say has already been said by Amigos grads and other parents, but the one thing that I notice is that Mr. Baker thinks that the English-speaking parents are out to get our kids the benefit of speaking Spanish but that it will be at the expense of the Spanish native speakers not learning English. Does he imply that our English-speaking kids are capable of learning in two languages but that the Spanish-speaking kids are not? Why does he think that the Spanish speakers in the program can't learn English but doesn't doubt that the English kids can learn Spanish? The parents of the Amigos students realize that learning two languages if valuable to BOTH Spanish and English. And to the woman who questioned, why Spanish and not Chinese? The kids are taking Chinese - once per week at the youngest grades. Those who continue throughout their primary educations can qualify to go after 8th grade on a trip to China. English-only educations in today's multi-cultural world is short-sighted. Europeans, Asians, Africans - all are educated in multi-languages from the time that they are little. Perhaps rather than blowing up Amigos' program, we might think to expand other schools' language instruction and offer educations in MORE languages so that our students will be prepared for the global society that they will be living in by the time they graduate.
Jennifer KG
Humanities Teacher
Cambridge, MA