Bilingual education makes us all better

As the world approaches a global marketplace and immigration is on the rise, what is District 300 doing to prepare its students for this "smaller" new world? According to a recent Gallup Poll, only a quarter of the American population is bilingual. I believe that by implementing bilingual grade and secondary schools, (having students take classes in languages other than English) we as a community will be better prepared to face and make obsolete the language barriers that have and will continue to arise.

By implementing this idea, we can prepare students to take better jobs with larger pay; all while assuming this money will find its way back into our local economy. It will also open up the world to our students; the knowledge of another language can provide freedoms never before imagined. Imagine traveling to France and being able to talk to an elderly French man, in his own language, and get his opinion on World War II. No history book is capable of portraying the color he could. What about traveling to Mexico and listening to a Mexican talk about the horrors of immigration. No politician could explain it as well as that man would. By starting these programs, we will also be improving the international perspective of Americans; it will show the rest of the world we are trying just as hard to be internationally minded as they are. America has lived too long on the steam of being the self-proclaimed Greatest Nation in the World; is it not time we did something to make ourselves worthy of such a title? I can think of no better way to do this than by investing in the lives of our children, who are the future of our cities, our great nation, and the world.

Should they not have every door opened to them and be given every opportunity?

Katherine Hempel

Huntley