lloydnebres's Profile

Batman... there's something suggestive about a number of people focusing (or maybe fixating) on the author's throw-away comment. Perhaps a nerve was touched? Speaking for myself, I scanned the article (as I do most anything on the web), and the language thing was what jumped out. In a larger context, a story about the kid-friendliness of an Apple Store is pretty much fluff. In contrast, any ideas having to do with language, learning, child development--that's not fluff. So, it makes sense that people picked up on that, even if the author did bring it up in jest. It's perfectly valid to make a counterclaim that foreign language learning at an early age is in fact valuable, not just for practical purposes (Spanish in North America comes to mind) but also developmentally. I for one am encouraging my elementary-age kid to learn a multiplicity of languages (Hawaiian, Spanish, Japanese) as well as computer languages eventually, in middle- or high school. To denigrate foreign-language learning as useless is a mistake, imho.