Dutch-Klingon programs will put your kids at a disadvantage.
English will suffer isn't a thing -- that doesn't happen IME. What does happen when dual language goes bad, IME, is that the second language never solidly kicks in for the kid, and they get increasingly miserable, at which point giving up is reasonable.
Newt and Sally's grade school started out 50/50 English dominant /Spanish dominant, but they lost a bunch of English dominant kids along the way (and the ones who stuck with it were disproportionately heritage Spanish speakers). It wasn't worthless for the dropouts -- that is, they picked up sort of "much better than American high school Spanish" (the ones I know had pretty fluent listening comprehension, but a hard time speaking or writing) before they quit, but they were unhappy.
At the presentations, they've gone over the data about how it pays off academically for students in the long run. (They've said that in the short run, reading in English may be delayed but that it will all wash out by 3rd grade or so.) And the academic advantages - besides knowing a whole 'nother language - are just super well documented and huge.
I think it's parents coddling their kids, tbh. They're scared that their kid won't rise to the occasion. Plus, that durn gut feeling.
Risin' up, back on the street.
Did my time, took my chances.
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet.
Es un hombre y su voluntad de sobrevivir.
reading in English may be delayed
I'd buy that -- Sally's reading wasn't exactly delayed, but it wasn't early at all, to the point where I was starting to fret a bit.
But the under-accounted for downside that I was focusing on is that I think it can be miserable for a kid who feels unsuccessful in the second language. Like, my two are success stories -- they were reading at grade level all along in both languages and so on. But even with that level of success Newt has said that leaving dual language and returning in sixth grade to English-only with one period a day of Spanish was a huge relief: school was suddenly pleasanter and much much less work.
I'd still advocate it, I think it was great. But not uniformly great with no drawbacks.
There is so much misery involved in school, I wouldn't say simply avoiding stress isn't a worthwhile goal in and of itself either.
It's kind of the opposite of "I want a school that challenges my kid". I don't want every evening ruined in a fight about homework or something.
(And when I was saying my two are success stories, they're not native-speaker fluent. Good accents, next thing to perfect receptive understanding, but definitely non-native levels of productive speech and writing.)
That's an interesting point - I imagine it is much more tiring than going to school in your native language. Pokey is doing incredibly well there and I think part of what works is that he does not handle boredom well AT ALL, and this is using more of his brain than kindergarten was. (Plus just being a year older helped, though, too.)
7, 8: I do think it may focus an irreducible amount of misery on something productive rather than something pointless. Like, I was miserably bored in grade school and usually in trouble for not doing work because it was stupid. Having been miserable because things were hard might not have been any worse, and I would have been learning something.
I'm told I have (or had) a very good accent when I spoke Spanish. I don't like my son's Spanish teacher's accent, but it seems petty to complain about and I don't know how a person from Chile would respond to a request that they sound more like an Argentinian.
Also what's working for Pokey is that he's a competitive little fucker, and he's getting praise heaped on him. This isn't necessarily an optimal combination but it's making him have a positive outlook on Spanish.
11 before I saw 10, and yeah, I think for a bright kid at risk of boredom, it's a productive way to pile a heavier mental load on them so they don't check out. My kids are much less weird about school than I was, and I think not having that initial six years of having it be a complete and utter waste of time was psychologically good for them.
Honestly, I was a bright kid who was bored in school. I enjoyed it greatly.
It's always too much hard work that causes me psychological issues.
Anyway, people asking me to do things have been a bane my whole life.
1. Wasn't aware there was a scandal about that. I shouldn't be surprised because you're right, hypocrisy. Reading a transcript, it's a little more raunchy than I'd expect, but not pure HBO-after-midnight stuff. (I'm sure there must be a better byword for a filthy comedy routine, but I don't know what it is.) Can't be sure how far outside the norm it is, though. The only thing I can remember to compare it to is Steven Colbert's roast of Bush, and those circumstances were very different.
2. I'm kind of surprised. Cassandane and I are fairly UMC and SWPL, we'd be thrilled to get Atossa into a language immersion school, and based on the waiting lists, so would a lot of other people. Regional differences, I guess?
I suspect that learning Spanish in an area with a huge number of Spanish-speaking people is very different, status-wise, than learning French in a place where nobody speaks French as a first language.
I imagine the class/race/language dynamic is profoundly different on the frontier than in the heartland (IIR where Cyrus is correctly).
Pwnage isn't pwnage if you add an historiography callback.
The heartland has plenty of places with more Spanish-speaking people than here. That's there the farm jobs are.
Yeah, if it were a French dual-language program the SWPL reaction would be entirely different.
"But momma, that's there the sun is."
Some French schools are on our list, but for the record, our first choice was a Spanish immersion program, and we're #389 on the list.
Feels kind of dumb to worry too much about this, though, since we're still potty-training. We've been lackadaisical about it, and the kid is stubborn.
That's one of those issues that feels important while you're in it, but everyone (barring significant medical issues) gets it figured out by kindergarten or so. Nothing to stress over.
since we're still potty-training
Immersion training is not recommended.
I can't even look at twitter until the Michelle Wolf thing blows over, JFC.
One thing I will grant right wing bloviators: they have stamina. Considering how tired I get of being outraged at genuinely appalling things, I don't know how they can stand being continuously outraged by bullshit.
20: I'm in DC.
26: define "stress over." It's not literally keeping us up at night. However, schools around here have free pre-K from age 3 and up and potty training is a condition of that. (It wa on the FAQ of a school or two. I haven't probed to see exactly how strict that is, and some schools have reassured parents that they know accidents happen occasionally, but I'm assuming we can't send her to school in the morning in diapers.) If she's not potty trained by September, we have to keep paying for daycare.
I can't even look at twitter until the Michelle Wolf thing blows over, JFC.
The Joy Ann Reid thing was bad enough. It's a fascinating equilibrium where partisans wasting their time on either side are precisely balanced in their outrage at whatever does or does not happen. An endless series of "Oh, I see she is being singled out for this because she is a black woman" vs. "Oh, I see because she is a liberal black woman she is getting away with this outrage, unlike if someone at Fox News did it".
We have all of the above experiences:
Two older kids did dual language before we lived in Spainish country for a year. Their k-2 experience was 50/50 with no Spanish prior to k which of course means less than 50/50 because recess lunch etc are kids speaking to each other in English. In immersion land, when oldest had finished 5th grade, he knew enough to get by in 100% Spanish public school. Second kid had trouble because he had only finished third grade, but Spanish 5th grade at 100% (age cutoffs different so they all skipped up a grade and are now redoing that grade back in the US) was too difficult for his level. He eventually learned but after several months of being unhappy, then he had health issues and missed a lot of school there so he got the least language advancement out of it.
Third and fourth kids they changed the dual model to be 80% Spanish early on, and youngest had a year of Spanish preschool (she wasn't yet in the dual program when we lived abroad). Fit in completely fine in 100% immersion at grades pre-k and 2. They are native level speakers for their age. Youngest started to become stronger in Spanish after a year at 100% (even though we spoke English at home) and was forgetting English words she had previously known and using Spanish grammar forms improperly in English (Can I have the ball red? How do you say mariposa in English?). After 8 months back in dual immersion she is still fluent in Spanish and above grade level in English and hardly ever makes mistakes. She'll be reading Spanish books and sounding out words and she'll get stuck in the middle of a word with an R and roll it for a second or two until she figures out the rest of the word.
What I've heard is that post-immersion you retain that level of fluency if you don't work to advance it. They will be in dual immersion through 8th grade, so I don't know if that means the youngest will be native level of a kindergartener and third kid native 2nd grader and they'll just be fluent above that, or if the dual builds the native even though it's not full immersion.
29 - Right. The "you have to get your kid potty trained to go to preschool" puts a time limit on it. Both my kods trained early and so it was no problem but that was the motivator to force ths issue early.
Around here, there's definitely a hierarchy of language immersion charters -- Spanish isn't exactly nonprestigious, but you can assume that more than 50% will be native Spanish speakers which gives some parents anxiety (how will my kid be the best when the others have that advantage? I admit I have thought this thought). Chinese seems to be the go-to for the hyper-ambitious Mom, French, especially the private schools, is for pretentious twits and failed actresses (and I say that as a Francophile). The really fancy private schools aren't language immersion, so I think that may devalue it somewhat in the prestige marketplace.
You say that as a Francophile who isn't a failed actress.
There's probably a psychology experiment where somebody takes a group a white, middle class parents and shows them a picture of either a classroom with mostly black kids or mostly Asian kids and then lets them choose whether they feel it is important for schools to challenge their kids academically or help them become "well-rounded".
I'm with Moby in 8.
But also a hypocrite, because my wife and I were both bemoaning the fact that xelA gets no language teaching. That said, no idea what a major second language should be.
Geographically close? France. Commonly spoken locally? Polish and Gujarati. Globally important?
Man, I'd kill to get my nephew into a dual language program, but the part of suburban Mass where my brother lives ain't got none. His mom's a native Spanish speaker, so he speaks both English and bad English already.
He actually has decent Spanish comprehension, but he can't produce nothing.
I do feel conflicted about the Michelle Wolf thing. It's obviously nothing a reasonable person would get upset about, and was intermittently pretty funny, but it's not like Democrats are in such a position of strength that we can afford to be insouciant about what people think of us. It's not that long 'til the poor fragile idiots of the "center" make up their minds who they would most like to have a beer with, because that's such a great way of choosing political leaders, and it does concern me that some of those dithering ninnies are still going to be clucking about this as they pick senators who may very well be in office when one of the olds on the court throws in the towel or dies.
Current mood: crabby and slightly hysteric.
I would force my kids to go to a Latin and Greek immersion charter if someone would start one. Go full fucking old school.
The most common excuse is that they don't think their child can handle it - that their English would suffer too much and they'd fall behind.
I am pretty sure that is just not a thing that happens. Languages and brains don't work that way when you're a kid.
39. If I win the lottery I shall start one just for you. Oudemia can run it.
Can't you just defraud the government to start a charter school, as is the fashion around here.
38: I understand generalized pessimism, and like I said I haven't been following the Michelle Wolf news except reading the transcript, but pessimism doesn't seem more warranted here than it does in general. 100.00 percent of people who were offended by what Wolf said were already voting Republican.
Based on this, it looks like the thing Wolf was criticized for the most was her treatment of Huckabee Sanders, which is just batty. I know, I know, shouldn't be surprised by anything any more, but still.
43: It's really something. There's so many layers of nonsense and awfulness wrapped up in it. I can't believe this is what passes for discourse.
I can't believe this is what passes for discourse
New mouseover text?
43 The problem isn't really the people shouting, it's the marginal folks barely paying attention that are ready to believe "Democrats have contempt for people like me' and the press corps that just loves to tell that story. It's going to be all hands on deck in November -- earlier if the Republicans decide to try another bit of serious legislation -- and we don't need a fifth column stung by Wolf's true observation, which the President has made as well, that he's stuffing money in their pockets.
Carp prefers his fifth columns unstung.
I had not been one of those people who think the White House Correspondents Dinner should be canceled. A collegial relationship between journalists and the people they cover isn't so bad.
But we're pretty clearly past that now. Journalists and Republican politicians are on opposite sides, in much the same way that scientists and Republicans are. Journalists' only choices are opposition or capitulation.
Margaret Talev, the WHCA president, chose capitulation. Poor choice. Time to cancel this event.
Once you concede that Republican snowflakes are too sensitive to hear basic truth or ordinary humor, you're screwed. You can no longer say anything. And that's their goal.
If you tread carefully around the racists and nitwits, they will just keep ratcheting up their sensitivity so that they can take offense at something. Nobody has a thinner skin than Donald Trump, and his stooges love him for it.
The problem isn't really the people shouting, it's the marginal folks barely paying attention that are ready to believe "Democrats have contempt for people like me' and the press corps that just loves to tell that story. It's going to be all hands on deck in November -- earlier if the Republicans decide to try another bit of serious legislation -- and we don't need a fifth column stung by Wolf's true observation, which the President has made as well, that he's stuffing money in their pockets.
Wait, are you actually partially faulting Wolf here, or the media for disingenuously piling on?
Further to 49, NPR had a nice piece on Republicans' need to feel persecuted.
48 and 49 seem 100% right to me. Also the whole "we're going to have a Friar's Club roast except with no insults" presumption of these people about the event is just so goddamn weird. Either have a sense of humor about yourself that can take insults or don't.
We should all ask ourselves if we appreciate dragon energy.
From the article in 52:
At the core of the problem for many American conservatives is a feeling that the culture war has been irrevocably lost to their ideological opponents.
The premise seems true enough. That's what happens when you base your cultural arguments around a narrow and declining portion of the population and Kayne.
I realize it was a random College Republican so it's basically nutpicking, but I was still impressed someone was able to literally say to a reporter's face freedom of speech means never being criticized. (Direct quote: "You should be able to say anything you want. You can't say we're for freedom of speech if you're going to critique people for what they say." Topic being M*lo.)
54: Back in my day, conservatives called dragon energy "precious bodily fluids."
56: Wow. And I thought UCSB was one of the better UCs.
31
Youngest ... using Spanish grammar forms improperly in English (Can I have the ball red? How do you say mariposa in English?)
I wouldn't even find that worrisome. I've done that with French, and I learned French in high school.
49: I wouldn't say "fuck you if you can't take a joke," because a lot of people who say that are racist assholes. (You aren't saying that either, I'm just trying to be clear.) I would, however, try to maintain some very basic acquaintance with the facts. The worst thing Wolf said about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance is that she looks like a softball coach. Accusing her of unfair attacks on Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance is either completely fabricated or an insult to softball coaches. I can try to come up with an explanation of why that's problematic but I've already taken this too seriously.
Some on TOP were suggesting it was a visual stereotype of her, as in looking like a lesbian, but I didn't agree with that - the word "coach" wasn't used, it was a (weakish) line about her dividing the press audience into teams for softball, so mostly about imperiousness.
57.2: That's just where the conference was. But I wouldn't assume anything as California College Republicans are almost all strange outliers.
I'm not blaming her. She executed her assignment just fine. The whole thing is fraught, however, and ought to be cancelled. There's plenty of room for journalists to have personal relationships with public servants -- and in a place like DC it's nearly unavoidable -- but this event doesn't move the ball downfield.
46- It's the Wellstone funeral. Nobody watched it or knew what happened but a bunch of people screamed about how Democrats used it to propose lynching all conservatives or something and it cost them a Senate seat.
And the argument liberals should be more careful not to insult conservatives and just get along is the same as arguing that Clinton could have won if she'd just "come clean" or "be more careful" about her scandals. The scandals were all bullshit which means if you avoid them there are plenty of other fake ones they could fabricate because that's what it means when the whole outrage was faked- there's nothing you can do to prevent it.
62: I just looked up to remind myself of the specifics of that episode and found another full-circle: Kellyanne Conway helped feed the frenzy. (Warning, Somerby link.)
62.2: This. Whitewater, all of it, was nonsense start to finish -- some real misbehavior showed up collaterally, but the scandal they spent years investigating was nothing. Al Gore didn't lie about anything. Nothing about John Kerry's military service rendered his medals questionable. There was no wrongdoing by the State Department related to Benghazi. The worst thing that could legitimately be said about Clinton's email practices is that they weren't the best idea for maintaining full historical archives.
There's no way to avoid bullshit scandals -- they're incredibly damaging and important, and have to be dealt with somehow, and it's a huge problem, but they're just too easy to make up. Suggesting caution before something blows up is one thing, but there's no use secondguessing normal behavior -- like being hired to do a roast-type comedy show, and doing a roast-type comedy show -- after the fact.
Suggesting caution before something blows up
And if you do that you're too cautious or scheming or inauthentic. It's almost like she was held to an impossible standard...
64 is correct. Republicans generally seem to be in disarray but they can still snap into action and make up some dumb controversy and make it the only thing they ever talk about, in unison, day after day until it becomes the only thing on the agenda. This is even more likely since they will need to cancel out the Democrats' lead in the polls. The Democrats also had a lead for most of 2014 and then it got flipped in September or October by the Ebola mass hysteria that ended 1 day after the election.
The Republicans don't just seem to be in disarray. They are in disarray. They agree on nothing except who they hate and thus cannot form any kind of reasonable government even by the standards of people who vote for them. The worse the fail at governing, the more they will attack liberals.
Oh god that was especially galling as a scientist. Yes Donald fucking Trump is the guy to listen to about communicable diseases.
The problem is that tearing things down and fucking everything up and ripping everyone to shreds is not that hard. And they've really honed their skill.
Time to cancel this event.
I dunno, I kind of like the thought of all these fifth columnists having to choose between being insulted and sitting through some Rich Little type performance.
Honed in on their objective, if you will.
Based on searching Trump's old tweets last year, it legitimately seems like he was radicalized by the Ebola scare of roughly September 4 to November 4, 2014. That's right, radicalized by germophobia. In 2012 and 2013 he was tweeting digs at Obama, clearly a Fox News viewer, on a perpetual search for the birth certificate, but also some positive comments. Then there are an INCREDIBLE number of demands that all flights from all countries in Africa be banned, with seemingly authentic shock and horror that by failing to do this, Obama must be either insane or actively seeking the destruction of America. After that, no mentions of Obama that don't have the basic premise that he is a traitor and enemy of the people.
Time was, a man would be afraid to go around announcing he was in mortal fear of nearly everything.
73 is pretty interesting-- is it written up anywhere?
Twitter has a nice programmatic API-- it's possible to retrieve tweets from any individual replies to any given tweet easily. There's fulltext indexing that goes back about a week. It would be pretty straightforward to generate monthly wordclouds or some other automatable lexical analysis for this.
...from any individual and replies to any...
It was just my impression, based on searching for Trump mentions of "Obama" to look for hilariously things he criticized Obama for.
76- Most pictures of the Ebola virus look vaguely tampon-like.
"Either we run everything or we try our best to destroy it" is an ethos.
For they so loved America that they would rather destroy it than see it run by the libs.
81, 82 -- No, they don't consider those options mutually exclusive.
The kid at 17 will still occasionally use the wrong pronoun in written English but doesn't do this in written French, and more rarely his spoken English syntax is French-ish. I think his English "suffers" ever so mildly because he reads and writes more in French than in English. At around age 8-10 he would sometimes complain bitterly about there being no rules in English, but he was at grade level in both languages all the way through. Probably due to the high level of pretentiousness in the family ;-). Although here in SF my sense is that those far along the pretension-francophile spectrum go to the *other* French-American school, leaving the actual French people, the relative-cheapskates and the former Soviet Union immigrant community to the French-with-a-begrudging-amount-of-English school. Some kids struggle in a dual language environment, some kids struggle because something else about the school is a bad fit, or because of other stresses in their lives - best to try and preserve flexibility in case your kid needs to be moved. The reduced boredom because of a challenging, content-rich curriculum has been a definite boon for the kid. The school is endearingly supportive of his choosing the literature track (currently generally disfavored) and dedication to German and Latin, they've really been lovely.
it's not like Democrats are in such a position of strength that we can afford to be insouciant about what people think of us
But Michelle Wolf isn't running for office or part of the Democratic Party hierarchy in any way. She's a comedian on a parody news show. Making fun of people in government is her actual job.
If you believe some of the Republicans, she's "media" and thus part of the Democratic party. On the other hand, Trump has barely been a Republican for any time at all, thus you can't criticize them for anything they didn't personally do. On tape. In the past week.
girl x says that learning chinese from age 3 had zero effect on her other courses. she thinks chinese is harder, because of counting words but obviously moreso characters. she's one level below the native speaker track, which is fine because she's not ready to read literature or would be too challenged by having to do it. she does have a tutor 90 minutes a week. it's barely possible I'm an overly tigerish mom.
girl x says that learning chinese from age 3 had zero effect on her other courses. she thinks chinese is harder, because of counting words but obviously moreso characters. she's one level below the native speaker track, which is fine because she's not ready to read literature or would be too challenged by having to do it. she does have a tutor 90 minutes a week. it's barely possible I'm an overly tigerish mom.
I insist upon a complete education with all courses taught in Linear A.
Re Michelle Wolf and the WHCA's statement in response, here's what they said when announcing her (emphasis added):
"Our dinner honors the First Amendment and strong, independent journalism. [Wolf's] embrace of these values and her truth-to-power style make her a great friend to the WHCA," said Margaret Talev, president of the WHCA, in a statement. "Her Pennsylvania roots, stints on Wall Street and in science and self-made, feminist edge make her the right voice now."
49: Nobody has a thinner skin than Donald Trump, and his stooges love him for it.
Yes. At times I fantasize about writing* a True Book of Republican Virtues to counter William Bennett's BS book.
The author draws upon a variety of literature ranging from biblical stories to political legends and speeches to illustrate the catalog of virtues--self-discipline, compassion, work, responsibility, friendship, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, faith--that he believes are foundational to strong moral character.At times I have attempted to use the "pure behavioral" approach on some of the Trumpoids I know but have done so in a strident, hectoring manner thereby undoubtedly blunting my message.
*Or more accurately "someone who can write writing."
While on politics and the shape of our current glorious era, I am so heartened by the way other world leaders have adapted by using the "talking to the audience of one" strategy. (Moon suggesting he should get the Nobel, Netanyahu and his Iranian stunt etc.)
The Fox and Friendsification of the world.
I think that in another 15 to 20 years I'll be able to pull off the older white guy trick of making people who argue with me seem rude to other white people regardless of how stupid I'm being. I'm going to just fill every conversation with whatever inverse Sean Hannity is.
When somebody says oil companies don't use human baby livers to lubricate their drilling rigs, I'm just going to go "There you go again" with a genial smile and a wink in my eye.
...they lubricate with the fat of baby seals!
Seals tasered by off-duty police officers!
Whats creepy about the Sarah Huckabee Sanders thing is that you know she's got a list and she's keeping track of which members of the press corps are tweeting attacks on Michelle Wolff and which are trying to stay out of it.
Mika Brzezinski was leading the charge on Smoke-eye-gate; look for her to get a nice exclusive with the President come North Korea Week.
Its a sick game they are playing.
Right-wingers have always been good at working the refs. Who do we have to fuck threaten to shoot to be as good?
On other sites, I'm now getting ads for AAPR. I blame you people.
Alliterative Association of Poets and 'riters?
It might have been AARP. Who can remember?
If he comments, Moby Hick, I can state unequivocally, will be the healtiest individual to ever comment on the internet. He has no history or ever using alcohol or tobacco products that he has ever mentioned to me.