Lehigh Valley Live – Editorial 
In post-war America, public schools began looking outward in many respects — among them, requiring students to learn a foreign language. For many baby-boom kids, this meant a high school choice among Spanish, French, Latin, German. The space race of the 1950s and 1960s kindled an interest in Russian. Some school districts with the resources to expand curriculum began offering courses in Japanese and other “new” languages. Today’s global economy has sparked an interest in teaching Mandarin Chinese in many schools and colleges. While the relevance of specific languages tends to follow the shifting demographics of globalization, one principle of language instruction has remained constant: The sooner kids get involved in a second language, the more likely they are to pick it up in a useful, retainable way, whether in an immersion program or a less-intense, continuing exposure in elementary grades.(more)