<p>Thanks mtnmomma for your suggestion. I hadn’t thought of that-- maybe S could take Spanish 3 in the summer at our local CC. That would free him up to take an elective as a sophomore next fall.</p>
<p>On the philosophical side, I do agree that Americans as a whole are woefully disadvantaged when it comes to speaking other languages. In our school district, the earliest any student can start taking another language is grade 7. And in the district where I grew up (long, long ago and 3000 miles from when I live now), only honors students could start taking a language in grade 7; everyone else had to wait til grade 9, not to mention that the only languages offered back then were French and Spanish. IMHO, middle school is far too late to start studying another language. My guess is that if kids started much earlier, and in a manner similar to how we all learned Eng, there wouldn’t be all this fussing (by me and others) about satisfying the language requirements.</p>