"The Ones Who Lead"

Language immersion programs are being used to help preserve historical languages that are dying out, such as Native American languages and Irish Gaelic.

It's interesting and unfortunate how language programs can get tangled up in political arguments.  While it is understandable how the Gaelic language programs could be linked to people's broader feelings and beliefs about Ireland's relationship to Britain, it seems very sad that a centuries-old language and culture could be lost due to a modern conflict.  Similarly, I am frustrated - and more than a bit offended - by those who suggest that the teaching of Chinese is in some way an endorsement of communism.  Do recent decades erase milennia (and I'm not exaggerating here, people!) of history?

San Francisco Unified School District has its high and low points.  Its language offerings are generally considered among its strengths.  These include language immersion programs in Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, and languages less commonly spoken in this area, such as Russian, Japanese, and Korean.  The popularity of these programs transcend the specific languages.  And rightly so, in my opinion, based on the well-documented congnitive and linguistic benefits of a second language, not to mention the harder-to-measure but increasingly critical value of learning to appreciate another culture's view of the world.