World Languages for our Multicultural World

First Global Challenge, an international competition, brought teen-agers from over 150 countries around the world to Washington, D.C. this summer. Students collaborated across countries and borders to build robots which would reduce water contamination. A keynote speaker observed that in the future there would be many opportunities for budding scientists from around the world to work together for peaceful purposes.

This is the world that we need to prepare our children for. Regardless of their career choices or where they may live, it is more probable than ever that they will be communicating and working with people from diverse language and cultural backgrounds.

How do we best prepare our children for success in the multilingual, multicultural 21st century?

Let’s give them an early start learning a foreign language. One can learn a language at any age, but children who start early have more years to become truly proficient and to have a marketable skill. [Read more…]