The ABCs Of Language

The State Board of Regents went too far when it voted last month to add a foreign-language requirement for a Regents diploma once the new Regents standards are fully phased in, by 2005.

Fortunately the Regents have come to the same conclusion: Their Chancellor, Carl T. Hayden, announced on Nov. 25 that the panel would rescind its decision that all high-schoolers study a foreign language for three years and pass a Regents language exam.

Instead the Regents will require that high school students either take one year of a foreign language or pass a simple proficiency test. Only those seeking a Regents diploma with "advanced designation," a form of honors, would need to follow the more stringent requirement. The Regents also will ask Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills to appoint a panel to study the future of language education.

"As an academic, I don't oppose a language requirement, per se," Anthony Correale, the East Hampton School District's assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum, said this week, but "it's too much all at once."

Not only are some students feeling the pinch of all-Regents-level course work, which the high school initiated three years ago, but so are faculty members. There simply are too few qualified language teachers around. New York City alone could use an additional 1,000, according to its School Superintendent, Rudy Crew.

Antonia Cortese, first vice president of the New York State Union of Teachers, has suggested that the Regents phase in instruction at the elementary level.

Of course. Elementary-aged children are quick studies in learning language. With that in mind, East Hampton and most other South Fork districts have begun offering a little French and Spanish - admittedly only the barest beginnings of vocabulary - in the second grade. Later, in grades seven and eight, students can earn one language credit and be boosted to the second level of instruction when they enter high school.

Curriculums surely can be adjusted to begin at the beginning. But the first major step in putting the foreign language horse before the cart will have to be to educate enough good foreign-language teachers to handle the growing numbers of students.