The New York Times points to an increase in foreign language classes in elementary schools in "Building a Nation of Polyglots, Starting With the Very Young" Could things like this happen in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District? Should they?

But with an economy that recognizes few geographical borders, and with people from all over the planet becoming our next-door neighbors, more Americans are demanding language instruction earlier in school.

Martha Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said that while there is no reliable data on the trend, her organization keeps learning of more school systems that think paying for elementary school language teachers is money well invested.

Since September 2006, all students in grades one through five in Loudon County, Va., have been given 30 to 60 minutes of Spanish instruction each week. Last year, officials in Fairfax County, Va. -- which, with 165,439 students, is the nation’s 13th-largest school system -- decided to expand the study of foreign languages to all 137 elementary schools over a seven-year period. Twenty-five Fairfax schools provide 30-minute lessons twice a week in Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese or French starting in the first grade. Ten schools have ambitious "immersion" programs where math, science and health are taught in a foreign language.

Paula Patrick, the Fairfax system’s foreign language coordinator, said Americans have for too long had a "mind-set that everyone else in the world could learn English." Her district is receiving appeals from businesses that need global-ready travelers and from a health care industry that needs translators.