I am a mild pariah among my parent friends for suggesting that 'spanish immersion daycare' was a way of recruiting lower-cost childcare workers (in the USA).
They're everywhere, and it seems they are the most common type of daycare, actually. (upper midwest, usa)
This is an awesome way to provide both an extra language when kids don't have much else to do and fit it easy to pick them up, _and_ it saves on costs? What could be better?
Yeah, kinda weird to point it out as if there is some conflict of incentives between costs and benefits. It's a pretty darn good language to pick even if you just wanted your child to learn another language regardless of costs.
I'm only saying that the primary motivation for Spanish immersion, good or bad, is probably cheaper child care costs, for the center, not the parent. Our kids are in one. Or were, until we moved.
As a parent of a 5 year old entering K this coming fall, we were set on the Spanish immersion program at our public school. Less expensive childcare costs never factored into the decision, and learning of cost savings is a bit of a shock to me. I never considered that aspect to private programs.
It's all subjective. I learned Spanish at the defense language institute and then used it extensively in South America and Mexico for work and travel and it opens so many doors. One thing is that I'm not hispanic so people see me speaking it there and it blows their minds. For hispanic people if they don't speak it they are judged and if they do, they're judged somewhat if it's not up to snuff so maybe your experience in those situations is different.
I had friends who went through the same language school for Chinese and German among other languages and they never used it. All the German linguists got reclassed into other languages like Spanish in the 90s. Last year I went on vacation to Puerto Vallarta and it was so useful even in a tourist heavy place like that. But I am sorry you do find it useless and I don't doubt it based on whatever your daily life is like and hobbies.
On a separate note it's not too late to learn Chinese or German!
Globally speaking, German is useless, unless you're European and trying to find a job in Germany because it pays better than your home country. The only German speaking country is full of educated people who also speak fluent English. You'll never meet an internationally minded German who doesn't speak excellent English. Spanish, however, is spoken in an entire continent, which also has a very low level of English, plus several other countries and is closely related to other latin/romance languages, giving you a head start on learning/understanding those.
Chinese/Mandarin might be super useful if you're living in China or a nearby country, but a) why would you want to live in China if you're not Chinese? And b) the language of international business in China is still English.
I agree that German isn't especially useful globally, but you're wrong on a couple points:
- There are several countries with German as an official language, and a few other with German-speaking minorities. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium all have it as an official language (though the last few are not terribly significant). There are also around half a million native German speakers in Italy. It's also useful as approximately the root language of Germanic languages, and makes it faster to pick up e.g. Dutch and to a lesser extent the Scandinavian languages.
- All internationally minded Germans do not speak English. Large swaths of Germans speak no, or only basic travelers' English. That everyone speaks English in Germany is an illusion that English speakers experience in Germany because they largely mix with only one social class, and the non-English speakers are invisible to them.
(I'm a native English speaker and fluent German speaker who's lived in the US and Germany for equal amounts of my life. My girlfriend, for example, is not comfortable in English, nor are quite a few of my friends, particularly those that are blue collar, somewhat older, or from the east.)
Good point about the other German speaking countries. I don't really know why that slipped my mind.
But the social class thing you mentioned is kind of my point. I think it's pretty much true in all of those German speaking countries, that if you only want to interact with service workers in cities and professional, college educated, internationally minded people, you will have plenty of people to talk to and might not ever feel a need to know German.
Yeah, probably the chancellor and foreign minister were the only two from their generation that were educated, internationally minded and don't speak English.
Her English is pretty bad. The commenter I was replying to insisted all internationally minded Germans speak excellent English. That's false for Angele Merkel and Guido Westerwelle, and it's literally impossible to find more high profile counterexamples.
Yeah, you're totally right. Angele Merkel was definitely not internationally minded. (She does not speak English well, nor did her foreign minister.)
It's also a pretty terrible thing to assume that everyone who wasn't born into the upper class isn't internationally minded. Again, my girlfriend doesn't speak English well because she's from a working class family from the east, but she's been to a couple dozen countries, and manages a team of people from several countries.
You can learn Cantonese for fun, but Mandarin is more useful for business or travel.
> It's the 3rd most spoken language in the US
That's interesting, but why would that influence your decision which language to learn? Almost all the Cantonese speakers in the US probably speak English, and there aren't that many in the grand scheme of things? (Especially compared to total number of Mandarin speakers.)
Show me any German native speaker under 50 who’s not fluent in English. Language groups with small numbers of English competency is going to get you much further.
Probably depends on where you live or want to travel. Spanish is of limited use in Europe and Africa, of almost no use in Asia, and massively useful in the Americas.
better could be having a work life balance system or remote work setting where the child can grow up with the love and attention a caring mother could provide
You're down voted by the fanatics here, but there's nothing wrong at all in what you said.
In some countries everybody is convinced that you should send away your kids early so they learn to "socialize", whatever that is. If you don't do it you are insane and a threat to society.
In some countries everybody is convinced that you should wait years longer before you send away your kids, because they are not biologically developed enough yet to be away from the mother. If you send them early you are insane and a threat to society.
What seems to be the rule is that 99% will defend the status quo or what their government says, no matter what the status quo is and no matter what it is their government is actually saying. During the pandemic, this meant that literal science around the virus was different depending on where you lived and who ruled you - and few people thought that was strange.
As for caring for young children, I think it depends mostly on the mother. Some mothers think it's boring to take care of their kids after a while or even hate being with their children all the time. They should leave them with day care or a relative if they can. Some mothers love spending all their time with their kids. It's a shame if they have to leave them with day care because they have to work to pay more taxes and tributes.
You know kids like hanging out with other kids. It’s fantastic for socialization. They generally enjoy getting to hang out and learn with other kids all day.
Back in the day when people had huge families and lived with their cousins, kids got this built in, but I think the idea of having a few kids that don’t get to see other kids every day with a stay at home mother is actually fairly unnatural.
You know what would be even better? If everyone got a pony and a puppy and a million dollars! But that's not really feasible to provide for everyone (at the moment).
Sort of related: in english Canada, french immersion often ends up being a way to send your kids to a better public school, and for whatever reason the english / french kids (as in enrolled in those programs) tend to split along socioeconomic lines.
I'd be curious to learn/chat more about how you're approaching it as a French-speaking parent. :)
I'm a native English speaker/~B1 French speaker trying to very intentionally create a bilingual household environment. It's not pure immersion, but I can (and do) narrate what I'm doing for most daily activities in French, read aloud in French, consume French audio, etc. All much to the bemusement of my own French mentor, who's validated that I'm not instilling a terrible accent, but is also getting peppered with questions in my search for French children's literature.
My kid is barely 2yrs, so my plans for English immersion are still vague, but here goes:
- consuming all media in the original language instead of dubs
- kindergarten already does some bilingual exploration, she's a native English speaker
- Later on I intend to do an "English day" each week at home where we would only converse in English. From my personal experience, the best path to fluency is having no choice but to speak in a given language. I also want to create boundaries to prevent mixing the two languages.
About french children's book, I could send you a mail about it. Depending on the age of your kids "la courte échelle" has great stuff.
It's seen as a step up in quality, but almost entirely because you're self selecting into the pool of parents who are more invested into improved education. There's also a sense that the "problem" kids are going to be concentrated in the English track. So win win.
They're everywhere, and it seems they are the most common type of daycare, actually. (upper midwest, usa)