Foreign Language Education at Darien High School

Contributed by Nicole Granath (Fairfield County)

There is no doubt that learning a foreign language should be an important part of every student's education. Foreign languages provide insights into and familiarity with cultures besides our own.

The Darien school district recently began to offer Mandarin Chinese at the High School. The program is now in its third year, and it will go through Mandarin 4. In Darien, students are offered Spanish and French in the middle school, and Latin starting in the high school. Middle school languages cover "Spanish 1" or "French 1" over three years. At the high school, AP Spanish 5 and AP French 5 are the highest courses offered in those languages. Education in Latin extends to Latin 3.

Darien High School's website recommends that "four years be the minimum amount of time devoted to the proficiency based program" in a world language. However, it goes on to say that students "should set aside part of their unscheduled time for this purpose." Foreign languages are to be taken in students' "unscheduled time" because a student does not need to take a foreign language to graduate from Darien High School.

Although it is unlikely the foreign language department will be expanded any time soon, I believe that the Darien community would benefit from having the option of taking Arabic. So much of our current foreign policy centers around the Middle East that even a basic understanding of the culture and language will go a long way when making decisions that affect the future of our country. On a more short-term scale, the district should look into making Chinese courses Honors level. Not only is the language very difficult, but many high-level students are deterred from taking the course because an A in a 300 level class will bring down their GPA. Additionally, I think that world language education should begin earlier, so students have a stronger basis in a foreign language before going to college or starting a career. The first step is to offer Chinese and Latin in middle school, and the eventual goal is exposing elementary school children to a variety of languages.

While considering the languages offered at Darien High School and areas in which it could be improved, I became interested in what other schools' world languages departments look like. Here is information and perspectives from students from schools across the state of Connecticut.