Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting that the New York City Education Department plans to expand dual-language programs offered in public schools. Carmen Fariña, the city’s schools chancellor, announced the plan yesterday, saying that citywide, 40 dual-language programs for elementary, middle and high school levels would be created or expanded for the 2015-16 school year. As reported in the article:

“In each of the programs, which aim to teach students to read, write and speak in two languages, half the students will be English speakers and half will already speak the other language of the classroom. A vast majority of the programs will be in Spanish, but there will also be some in Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese, French and Haitian-Creole.

In remarks made at a professional development session at the United Federation of Teachers offices in Brooklyn, an enthusiastic Ms. Fariña described her own experience as a child who started school in New York City without speaking English, and as an adult who is bilingual in English and Spanish. She also emphasized the global advantages of speaking more than one language.

“It’s one thing to go out with Japanese businessmen who all speak English; it’s another thing to be able to have some dinner conversation in their language,” Ms. Fariña said. “That means you’re coming to the table with a different form of respect, a different form of acknowledgment, and people accept and honor that.”

Dual-language programs have been growing around the country as school districts try to prepare children to compete for jobs in a globalized, polyglot world. Methods vary: Some schools teach half the day in English and the other in Chinese, for example. In other programs, the languages alternate by day or by subject.”

This is a great move by Ms. Farina and a plus for NY public schools.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks wrote in the New York Times yesterday if it were not for a free community college education, he would never have become the person that he is. In an op-ed piece entitled, I Owe It All to Community College, he described how he applied to some prestigious schools knowing full-well they wouldn’t accept a student like him with low SAT scores. He decided to go to Chabot College, a community college that accepted everyone and was free. Here is an excerpt:

“In 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif., an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores. Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. and Villanova, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they’d toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn’t afford tuition for college anyway. I sent my final set of stats to Chabot, a community college in nearby Hayward, Calif., which, because it accepted everyone and was free, would be my alma mater.

For thousands of commuting students, Chabot was our Columbia, Annapolis, even our Sorbonne, offering courses in physics, stenography, auto mechanics, certified public accounting, foreign languages, journalism — name the art or science, the subject or trade, and it was probably in the catalog. The college had a nursing program that churned out graduates, sports teams that funneled athletes to big-time programs, and parking for a few thousand cars — all free but for the effort and the cost of used textbooks.

Classmates included veterans back from Vietnam, women of every marital and maternal status returning to school, middle-aged men wanting to improve their employment prospects and paychecks. We could get our general education requirements out of the way at Chabot — credits we could transfer to a university — which made those two years an invaluable head start. I was able to go on to the State University in Sacramento (at $95 a semester, just barely affordable) and study no other subject but my major, theater arts. (After a year there I moved on, enrolling in a little thing called the School of Hard Knocks, a.k.a. Life.)”

The op-ed concludes with an endorsement of President Barack Obama’s plan to offer free community college nationwide.

There are millions of people who have been served in the same way as Tom Hanks by our community college system. It deserves our praise and respect and should be free.

Tony