Photo credit: abbynormy
Who gets to be trilingual? The situation always seems to present itself as such: one parent speaks one minority language and the other parent another minority language and they live somewhere, where the majority language is spoken.
What about those parents who are monolingual? What about parents who are both what they call heritage speakers of a minority language, like myself? What about parents who would LOVE for their children to speak more than one language, but can’t afford to send them to private foreign language schools? This is one of the very reasons why I don’t play an instrument, for example. My parents did not have the financial means to send me to lessons, let alone rent or buy an instrument. I got to dance ballet, but only because the classes were by donation.
I feel fortunate that we have the option to send our daughter to a foreign language school. Although as much as I advocate for multilingualism I also have to acknowledge that there are individuals for whom this is not an option.
The city I live in, Austin, Texas, has finally implemented dual language education in our public schools. A selected few schools were chosen, but hopefully others will follow. This kind of education, where bilingualism is the goal, has been one our local community has advocated for several years. I guess you can say the larger community is starting to find value in multilingualism or that all it can sometimes take is a savvy, younger, open-minded superintendent to catch on to the idea of bilingualism as a goal. So, again, I pose the question, what about those cities where dual language education is not an option in the public schools? It was only a few years ago where this was the case in my progressive, university-town of a city. The only schools that existed were fairly expensive private ones.
There’s more to consider besides a parents motivation, such as, what are the costs to become bilingual or trilingual? As I have been researching private day cares for our baby I have learned that private-language schools cost a little more than your regular private schools. In fact, these private language schools are in such demand that I find myself weighing the “costs”, and not just in monetary terms, but in other ways, such as teachers that seem more like niñeras than actual teachers.
When thinking about how much it costs to becoming multilingual I am referring to multiple sentidos. There’s the extra financial burden and then there’s the fact that the foreign languages schools are limited in scope, therefore limited in how particular parents can be when thinking about other factors such as teaching philosophy, cleanliness, distance from home, or student to teacher ratios.
No matter where we stand in our plight for multilingual education one thing remains the same: the importance of continuing to advocate for dual language education so that everyone has the option and not have to weigh out the costs.
This is why we opened our charter school. We want multilingual, multicultural, global learners regardless of financial status. The public schools in our area that have dual language programs are full and waitlisted, and only open to those kids who live within that school’s attendance boundary. We opened a charter school to help fill the need and where attendance boundaries don’t mean much.
Thank you Deonne! Here in Houston I was aware of two public elementary schools with a dual-language program, both far from our house and both run on a lottery system (several dozen applicants for every space, so each year you just reapply and hope, as no wait listing is done). After reading your post, I researched this and just found out that there is a dual-language charter school in Houston, close to our neighborhood. We are definitely going to check this out!
It would be uber-cool to raise our son tri-lingual, if we could send him to an immersion school in another language (other than Spanish and English, that he’s getting at home). It does seem at least in Houston that may be the province of those who can afford private schools. But on the other hand, maybe I just haven’t dug deep enough?
I wonder if any of these private schools have scholarships. Perhaps with the goal of student diversity?
Lots of food for thought! And further research!!!
Hi BethO,
I know that one of the private schools in Austin does offer a form of financial assistance. It definitely would be a good idea to inquiry about that. Suerte!
I agree. Thank you Deonne. In the last couple of years there have been community efforts in Austin (after much work) to open a charter, a private, and now our public schools have dual language!
I used to live in Austin, and I have a good friend who teaches at one of the bilingual schools and another who sends her daughter to one. The latter would like for her daughter to be trilingual (they speak just Spanish at home), but doesn’t really have the resources or the inspiration on how to go about it. Their family makes regular trips to Brazil, where their daughter is exposed to Portuguese, but the language is so similar to Spanish that the differences don’t really sink in with her. And obviously even that little bit of exposure costs thousands of dollars a year!