When I was teaching high school Spanish in the early 90s, I invariably heard the question “When am I ever going to need this?” It was a familiar question that I often heard my own classmates utter when I was in high school in the mid-80s. At the time, living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I wasn’t all that sure myself when Spanish would be useful to me, but I had a sense that it was important anyway.
It’s hard to imagine that our kids, when they get to 9th grade, will be asking that same question. They may not like Spanish – or whatever second language they’re studying – but I highly doubt that, as they walk down the streets of our ever-more multicultural city, they’ll wonder why a second language would come in handy. But even more than that, I hope that they’ll have been exposed to a second (if not third!) language long before they reach 9th grade.
