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Second language classes first appeared in Grade 9, when French was introduced. Spanish was added in Grade 10.
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Southern Ontario, Canada, 1971.
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This was a town of 2000 people, surrounded on all sides by farmland, Indian reservations and quarries. Kids were bused in from other towns in the area with even less population. There were hardly any kids from rich families. Most were from middle-class folks, except the native Canadians, most of whom were dirt poor.
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Both were optional.
We started taking Spanish classes in second grade, but I think that’s just because one of the second-grade teachers was fluent in Spanish. We didn’t have another language course until 6th grade when we took a…world-culture class I guess and learned the alphabets and numbers and greetings etc of several languages.
Then in 7th grade, Spanish was offered. It was never a requirement for graduation in Utah. When I moved to California though it was a requirement, so my lack of participation in 9th or 10th grade came back to bite me in the ass.
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Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, and…one other (Russian, I believe). My parents put me in the Chinese program, of course, being that I’m from a Chinese family, and there were OVER ONE BILLION CHINESE SPEAKING PEOPLE, among which maybe 3 or 4 ever discussed anything of the slightest interest to me whatsoever.
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Maryknoll, 1998-1992. At the time, an anarchic hellhole led by a hypocritical and ridiculously incompetent bible-thumper. (From what I’ve heard, it’s slowly made the progression to an anarchic hellhole that’s slightly more honest about it.)
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Um…okay, there’s this one retirement home, and a bunch of apartments, and I think this one road…like, it was Hell on earth, and the entire faculty enforced five flippin’ rules with insane fervor while ignoring EVERY OTHER FREAKING RULE IN THE FREAKING CHARTER, what does it matter?
Yes, they were a requirement. See, 'cause learning foreign languages is good in principle. There were lots and lots of wonderful principles in that school.
Sheesh. Learning a foreign language in high school is like buidling a supercomputer in the middle of a hurricane. Not…bloody…likely.
5th grade: English (required)
7th grade: Latin, French (one required)
9th grage: Latin, French, Spanish (optional)
Minimum requirement: start one language in 5th grade, one in 7th, of those continue one through 10th grade and one through 13th.
I took English, Latin and French.
Later they introduced English in (some) elementary schools.
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Grades 5-10 Gymnasium in Bavaria, 10-13 Gymnasium in Hesse, both public
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First school: a potato field
students from diverse backgrounds, but relatively rural
Second school: upper middle class neighborhood, high proportion of students from wealthier backgrounds.
However the languages offered did not depend on the neighborhood, but on school type. Mine (a Gymnasium) prepared for university, so two languages were required. A school in the same area that prepared for apprenticeship required only English.
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9th grade (Freshman year of high school) Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese
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Arcadia, CA 1998-2002
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Upper middle-class
I believe it was a requirement to take at least two years of a foreign language (or maybe three? I think just two), in accordance with the requirements of the UCs.
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Started learning English in first grade. Both my elementary (private) and high school (public) only offered English as a second language, but in high school you could take other languages at the university (my school was the university’s lab school).
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I went to a small private elementary school from 1988-1995, and a magnet public school from 1995-2001.
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My private school was mostly middle/upper middle class, my public school was more diverse, but mainly middle class.
Learning English was required. I think it’s required in Puerto Rico, but the grade when they start teaching it may change according to the school. Also, some schools teach everything in English except Spanish, while others teach everything in Spanish except English. Both of my schools followed the last pattern.
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Seventh grade (first year of junior high; sixth grade was elementary school in my district). Spanish and French were offered, from seventh to twelfth grades. We had Spanish instruction in sixth grade taught by advanced high school Spanish students in 6th grade, as well. Later, as an advanced Spanish student myself, I did the exact same thing - in my former 6th grade teacher’s class, even.
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Petaluma, California, in the North Bay part of the Bay Area.
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Upper middle class.
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I believe it may have been required for a year or two, but I never paid attention because I took Spanish for five years anyway. It is required to do two years of a language to be admitted to the University of California, and if you don’t do three, you have to do another year in college to graduate.
The other high school in my district had German as well, so if you really wanted to, you could take it there, but I don’t know if anyone did. Almost everyone took Spanish - there were something like 30 Spanish classes at my high school - versus four French classes.
8th grade, required language class that had Latin, German, Spanish and French. This was only for a quarter of the year so not much time spent on it.
High school we had a choice of Spanish, German, French and Latin. I don’t think there was a requirement to graduate but there was one to goto college.
This was in Frederick, MD in a mostly middle class area.
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9th grade (already too late IMHO); Spanish. You could also take German but only via satellite, almost nobody did. Two years of a foreign language was required only if you were going for the “comprehensive” diploma, which was better then the regular diploma because of tougher requirements.
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A public school in western Kentucky. I was there from 1992-1996.
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A mix of lower and middle class.
I gotta say, I had a damn good Spanish teacher. She wasn’t a native speaker, either, she didn’t learn Spanish until college. My degree requires 4 semesters of a foreign language and I would have been completely lost in 101 and 102 if Señora hadn’t drilled it into my head how to conjugate simple verbs. If they would let her loose on the 5 year olds rather than the 15 year olds, she’d have 'em fluent by 4th grade.
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7th grade - Spanish or French. I took Spanish with the same teacher from 7th grade - 12th grade.
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A very small public school (combined junior high and high school) in Montgomery County, MD. I was there during the late 80’s and early 90’s.
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Definitely middle class.
I believe two years of a foreign language was required to graduate, but it may have just been a requirement for collegiate admissions. In today’s world, I understand foreign languages are even offered in most public elementary schools in MD.
Does it count if it’s a national language? If not, then my schools didn’t offer ANY foreign languages at all. If so, then:
- French, starting at Grade 4, though it’s now avaliable in grade primary through an Early Immersion program.
- Public elementary and high schoolsNova Scotia, started attending in 1990.
- Working class, I think you would call it.
- Required from grades 4-9, though there is a Late French Immersion program which starts at grade 7 (in high school), and now an Early French Immersion program which starts at Grade Primary, though this came after I had already started high school. Both programs are optional.
Spanish, third grade. PS 162 in Bayside, Queens. I think it was only given for our class (one of four.) No one asks third graders permission about anything! Nice middle class neighborhood, but our high school, when I went, had the highest test scores in New York outside of the specialized ones like Bronx Science.
Everyone else got languages (Spanish or French) in 7th grade - mandatory.
NW Suburbs of Chicago - middle- to upper-middle class bedroom community, for the most part.
Mid-70’s
Spanish was required in grades 5-8. In high school, a foreign language was required. IIRC, the choices were Spanish, German, French and Latin. Vaguely recall Latin was dropped midway through my time in HS.
How is French a foreign language in Canada?
I didn’t attend a school offering a foreign language, ever. Catholic schools, we were a poor school, whaddya gonna do. This was in Kingston, ON; the city wasn’t poor, but at the time Catholic schools got much less funding than public schools (and still get less, but not as bad as back then.) They were just starting to roll out Spanish and Latin when I was graduating.
Depends where you live. If you were English in southern Ontario in an English community, then French was a foreign language.
I’m not going to waste my time debating with you whether or not a language spoken by a minority in a unilingual province that itself is within a federally bilingual nation is foreign or not.
Here is a good timeline of bilingualism in Canada: Canada.ca
In elementary school, they taught us a few words/phrases in Spanish (“hello,” “how are you,” “it’s 2:00”) but didn’t really “teach a language.”
In 6th grade they started really offering Spanish, French, and German. (Chinese showed up in High School)
About the same time, they started offering full immersion at one of the schools. The students there started in Kindergarten and had all of their school classes in Spanish.
There was no requirement to take foreign language to get out of high school, but there was a requirement for most colleges. And since almost everyone planned on going to college, almost everyone took foreign language.
Pacific NW, the mid-80s, and middle to upper middle class.
A smattering of French for the “academically talented” 5th and 6th graders, but formal classes in high school only (grades 9 through 12): French, Spanish, Latin.
This was in the public school system in Chillicothe, Ohio, between 1978 (5th grade) and 1985 (12th grade). The school district was lower-middle to middle class, with rural/working class in the surrounding area. The language courses weren’t required, but recommended for those of us intending to go to college.
As for a requirement to study Spanish, I’d be all for it, as Spanish is the language most likely (after English) to be useful in the United States as well as in many other countries. It is also easy for English speakers to learn, although if American public schools ever manage to teach *any *language properly I’ll be amazed.
I went to a private school that went up through 6th grade, and they didn’t have any foreign languages. Then I went to a public junior high school which had “Introduction to Foreign Languages” which I think was mandatory for 6th graders (although I never took it) and then Spanish, French, and Latin for 7th and 8th grade.
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French - Grade 1
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Pennfield Elementary, 1984
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It was/(is?) a requirement to be raised bilingual in the province’s schools - it is the only province in Canada recognised officially as bilingual.
Though, to be completely honest, it’s really more of a North=French, South=English kind of thing, with a smattering of truly bilingual throughout. My maternal grandmother is a Frenchwoman from “up north” who learned English and now lives in southern NB, and my paternal grandmother (who also lived in southern NB) had a heavy French accent - yet spoke not a word of it.
Anyway, back to the point: yes, it was required.
Unofficially, my 4th grade class was required to take Spanish, but that was because we had a student teacher who was Mexican and our regular teacher thought it would be a good idea. I enjoyed it.
Officially, 7th grade was the first year of foreign languages. At the time, All the students were in one of four ‘levels’, with the top two levels being required to choose either French or Spanish. Foreign languages weren’t available to the lower two levels.
From 9th grade, Italian and Latin became available, and foreign langauges became optional.