Starting Earlier?

[Rooks57]

I live in America and unless you go to a private school, foreign language classes are reserved for high school.  I can't help but think that it's a shame that we don't start younger when our minds are more flexible. What do you think?  Do you wish you would have started sooner?

[宇崎ちゃん]

I've stated it a lot here already: learning multiple languages at an early age is a bad idea.

Children are always being forced to learn maths, history, literature in their own language, at least 1 foreign language, biology, geography, economy, etc.
Then after school, parents are very likely to teach children how to play piano, how to use a computer, how to whatever else they don't learn at school.

While we adults tend to forget the pain by the time we get our own children, I actually do remember this pain.
This eventually resulted me in not learning most subjects at secondary school and failing nearly all exams.
When I get children of my own, I will let them be kids until they really want to learn something new (programming, digital art, etc.) themselves.

[Baburra]

I started very early and was enrolled in Chinese languages studies as part of my schooling from even before I can remember and I spent decades having to pass tests in that language and i don't believe I get much use out of it now because we didn't speak it at home. I do think starting very early can be helpful and a lot easier but without reason and focus I don't think it is a good way to spend the time of a child as I would have preferred to have just spent that time on someone else that I felt would be personally more fulfilling and useful in the long run. 

[darkchild]

I believe whatever you start early as a child grows with you naturally.

The problem with some curriculum planners is that they do not think it is more difficult to learn languages as an adult. I would have preferred at least three foreign languages inculcated at an earlier age and then the advanced taken up at higher classes.

[Norm A]

I live in South Africa right now and it's really great that we have eleven official languages, and most of them are taught in the schools. My daughter is only five and she already speaks four languages. When she gets older I obviously will try to get her to choose more languages to add that are not being taught at their schools like maybe Latin, French and German. 

[lushlala]

9 hours ago, Rooks57 said:

I live in America and unless you go to a private school, foreign language classes are reserved for high school.  I can't help but think that it's a shame that we don't start younger when our minds are more flexible. What do you think?  Do you wish you would have started sooner?

OMG I thought America would be a lot more progressive than that!! That's also the case here in Botswana, and I think it's such a shame really because as we all know, learning a foreign language is best done at an early age; the earlier the better really. If I ever have kids and I can afford to, I'll be sending my kids to private school because they start foreign languages very young. It's heartbreaking because the kids whose parents can't afford to send them to all these posh schools are missing out on so much!