Studies show that bilingual people have better concentration, better problem solving skills, are more creative, have a better vocabulary, better test scores, better communication skills, better memory, are mentally stronger longer, and have better financials.
I think we all agree on this. Our cousins around the world learn two or three or several languages and it is entirely normal for them to do so. They don’t seem to be suffering because they know several languages.
If knowing more than one language is so obviously beneficial, why aren’t we teaching our young children a second language?
Of course I am deeply biased towards French as a second language because of where we live. We live a stone’s throw from 6 million French speakers in Quebec and 300,000 French speakers in New Brunswick.
Schools along the southern border with Mexico teach their children Spanish because of where they live. This makes sense. But why do we teach Spanish up here? This makes no sense at all. Well, not to me anyway. We live almost 3,000 miles from the Mexican border and, for some reason, we teach our children Spanish.
Weren’t we teaching our children Mandarin a few years ago? Made as much sense as Spanish.
En tous cas, j’changerai pas l’idee de personne, j’pense b’en. Mais ça fait longtemps que ça m’tracasse. Siri says about 2 million Americans speak French. Malheureusement, ses 2 million ne sont pas dans Aroostook même si on a déjà été très nombreux.
Le Club Français aimerais changer tous ça. C’est pas facile. Si tu veut aider a preserver et élargir le français dans le nord d’Aroostook, envoie un message a: leclubfrancaismaine@gmail.com.
Don Levesque is a Grand Isle native who worked in community journalism for almost 35 years. He was the publisher and editor of the St. John Valley Times for 15 years prior to retiring in 2010. He wrote a weekly newspaper column, called Mon 5¢, in the Valley Times for more than 20 years. He has been inducted into the Maine Journalism Hall of Fame and the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame.
