The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-11-28
LITTLE GERMAN
 BEING TAUGHT IN LOW GRADES

Only 19 cities out of 163 of 25,000 population or over reporting to the
 Bureau of Education teach foreign languages below the seventh grade of the elementary school, according to a statement just made public. In 12 of these cities German is the foreign
 language taught; in three cities Ger man, French and Spanish are all taught in the elementary grades; in one city German, Italian and Polish; while in the three remaining cities the languages taught to elementary school children. are French and Span ish. alone or in combination. In few cities the foreign language is taught in all grades, from the first to the eighth; in others the instruction does not begin until the fifth or sixth grade. The number of elementary school children taking German ranges from
 40 in one city to 22,000 in another. Few of the superintendents who re- piled to the Bureaus inquiry favor the teaching of German or any other for eigr language in the lower elementary school, though many of them believe thoroughly in foreign language study for students in higher schools. A Cali fornia superintendent says: 'I was in doubt before the war. l am becom- ing convinced now that our public schools should teach Hone nation, one | language, one flag The teaching of a foreign language below the seventh grade is a sentimental hold of the old lcountry on Americans of the second
 generation" An Illinois superintend- ent says: t"The public schools should
 not assist in perpetuating foreign 1 I~~o t.,
 viewpoints in the community An
 Iowa superintendent is careful to ex- plain that German is taught in the elementary grades in his schools be- | cause "German-American grandpar- | ents and many parents demand it." l. A typical condition is that in Bal l timore, Maryland, where the introduce l tion of German as a subject of instruc-
 tion in elementary schools in 1874 was partly due to the fact that there were a large number of German pri- vate schools in which the atmosphere
 was entirely German. By the intro- duction of German into the public
 schools the private schools were elim- mated and the: children gradually came under the influence of Ameri-
 can ideas. In this city the superin- Itendent reports that '"The number of pupils taking German has been reduc-
 ed so that now German is taught only in a few instances in the seventh and eighth grades" In St. Louis instruc- ton in German in the elementary schools was discontinued in the sos. In Cincinnati agitation against the continuation of German in the schools
 has resulted in the reduction of the humber of children studying German in the grades from $500 in 1916-17 to 1000 in 1917-1S. German has been
 taught in all grades of the elementary
 schools of Cincinnati for 76 years.
 In it's statement regarding the situa-
 ton the Bureau makes the following Suggestions: 'eThere is general agree lment among educators and public men both in this country and abroad, that
 there should be no interference with
 existing high school and college pro-
 vision for the teaching of German
 that a knowledge of the German lan-
 guage is more important now than it
 was before the war. The upper ele-
 mentary grades, especially where or
 ganized in the junior high school may quite properly offer foreign languages
 including German, but educators gen.
 orally look upon the teaching of for.
 eign languages in the lower elemen-
 tary grades as of very questionable
 va1ue."