Originally posted by Twisterdog
Something is definately wrong with our school system when thousands upon thousands of functionally illiterate teenagers walk away with high school diplomas every year. Teach two languages fluently? Our school system isn't even requiring competency in one language!
Thank God Somebody Brought This Up!! Amen to that Twisterdog!
First of all, 2 years of spanish at your local high school- begun at the high school level- is nowhere near enough to learn a language. I had 5 years of French and, today I'm at ground zero again (dur to nonuse). Had I begun learning in first grade, I feel certain I'd be fluent.

Our school systems fail kids on a regular basis. I'm not dissing the schools or the teachers. In fact, I think often they are doing the best they can. But parents and teachers do not exactly make good teams these days. Kids enter school with no experience with the alphabet or numbers. My parents made darn sure I could read basic books, write my full name and certain other words and perform basic flash card math- all at the age of 5 when I entered school, so I wouldn't fall behind the other kids. That head start served me well. It costs nothing for a parent and child to read together or learn to count. Parental responsibility is not an education of priviledge, it is basic.

We graduate virtual illiterates all the time in this country. There are plenty of high school graduates who can't diagram a simple english sentence. If you doubt that, just read through some of the posts on Pet Talk. I don't mean to hurt feelings, and I'm not talking about typos. But there are some posters in these forums who do not have a grasp on their native language at all. Embarrasingly, there are plenty of posters here who were born and live in countries all over the world who have a MUCH BETTER command of english than some of our own citizens.