Dear Teacher of French:

The middle school that my 6- and 9-year-olds will be attending in Rye, New Hampshire in a few years recently announced that it will add Spanish instruction to what had been only French in grades six through eight for many years.

Though my heart lies in the French program, I endorse this decision because I certainly believe that children whose hearts (or whose parents’ hearts) might lie in Spanish should have the opportunity to learn the language of their choice too.

I worry, however, that in a budget-cutting frenzy at some future date, two languages might be one too many, and French might not come out on top in a popularity contest, as it didn't (to the dismay of many parents) in an adjacent school district several years ago.

Of course, my immediate instinct was to express this sentiment in a letter to the school superintendent, but I was surprised at how difficult it became. I know why I love French, and why I want my own children to speak and understand the language, and appreciate the history and culture that go with it, but I had a hard time coming up with inarguable, practical reasons that would resonate in a somewhat mixed socio-economic school district (and what school district isn’t?).

So, I wrote to AATF to ask if it had wrestled with this proposition before (surely, I thought, it must have, over and over again), but I received no response.

Then, by accident, I happened upon the following link on a client’s web site:

http://www.fll.vt.edu/french/whyfrench.html

This is the letter that I was unable to write myself, and I just can’t resist sharing it with you. If you have practical reasons or other ideas of your own, that would make sense in any cash-strapped school district in the United States, please feel free to send them to us at french@visitquebec.com.

We will happily collect and post them on our own web sites, and try to do our part, too, to fight the erosion in the availability of French instruction in public schools in America that we see and hear about every day.

Thank you, we look forward to hearing from you.


J. Michael Donovan
President