Don t Worry, It s Of A Mexican Restaurant With Her...

Don’t Worry, It’s in English A monolingual mother walks into a Mexican restaurant with her monolingual daughter. Two Mexican waitresses converse about the weather. â€Å"They’re talking about us,† the mother explains to her young in her native and only tongue. Little does the daughter know, but her mother is not only fluent in English—but in xenophobia as well. Many Americans see no point in bilingual elementary education because they view math, reading, and appeasing the system to be of higher value. However, learning a foreign language in elementary school takes advantage of the human critical period for language acquisition, meets other countries in their education systems—catching the United States up with the rest of the developed world, and provides abundant cognitive benefits that improve learning in various aspects. The bedrock of biology dictates an evolutionarily advantageous yet inconvenient reality: the critical period. It determines the window in an organism’s life in which a skill or behavior can be learned. It marks the peak of development. It heightens sensitivity. It breeds talent. It is the very root of expertise. Even in birds, mating songs must be learned within the finite window. Learning is confined by the rule of the critical period—and humans are no exception. Linguist Eric Lenneberg recognized that human language is typically learned during its respective critical period—infancy through puberty (â€Å"Language Development†). Paul Thompson, brain researcher and