I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.

My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.

  • malafouris [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Unfortunately there's only so much that can be done even with high-quality and comprehensive language education that doesn't take up a large portion of school hours - overcoming the hurdle of getting enough exposure to the language without having any interaction with it outside of a few hours per week can never really let you get past A1/A2, especially in output. Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!) so that avenue is also pretty hopeless for a lot of people. Honestly, outside of having proper bilingual education and schooling, if there was a way to introduce tools like Anki to kindergarteners in a way which wasn't overbearing or shitting on their natural curiosity it probably wouldn't work half-badly lol

    • FloridaBoi [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!)

      My in-laws