“Anyone that doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own,” Johann Wolfgang once wrote. Around the world, 6,500 languages are spoken, but BHS only provides three for students…BHS educates 954 students and only offers three language classes…Spanish, French, and Italian.

Some in BHS believe more languages and even ASL should be offered, because most students who take language and language teachers themselves insist it’s a good ideato learn more than one way to communicate. Studies also show learning other languages also help us better use our first language.

So The Eagle’s Cry posed this question to readers: “Should BHS offer more languages for students?”

Mr. Rodriguez is the Language Director in BHS: he teaches Spanish and is in charge of the entire language department. He is not thrilled with the number of languages offered. He believes there should be different conversation about language classes, possibly involving Latin class. Mr. Rodriguez also feels “ASL should be offered,” but the community “should decide on that.” The language director should have a say in the number of languages is being offered and should be heard out.

Ms. Sagarese teaches languages at BHS as well. However, in contrast to Mr. Rodriguez’s opinion, she is satisfied with the number of languages offered in BHS.

She said, “This is the ideal number [because of our small population]. When I went to Massapequa, they offered three languages in 7th grade.” But as Massapequans get older, they take languages as electives; the students would take Italian as an elective and a Latin course. Ms. Sagarese also mentioned that recently, Massapequa added Mandarin Chinese as well. She thinks that the number of languages is doable because of the greater population of students…Massapequa has three times the number of students as BHS. Her suggestion to those who want more languages: take all three languages offered here.

In her teaching experience in BHS, Ms. Sagarese taught one student who took all three languages, and she thinks it’s a good idea. She believes it’s what the community should want and opening doors to possibilities to offer more language classes.

Ariella Rojas is a sophomore in BHS who is dissatisfied with only three languages offered because “there are so many languages around the world and we should expand our knowledge.” She believes being trilingual is important, because in the future if you had to attend a business trip around the world and you don’t know other languages, what would happen? She feels BHS should be more open to languages: she suggests Greek, Old English, and Arabic. She believes ASL should be offered as a language class because “not everyone has the ability to hear or speak.”

BHS is a “melting pot” of many races and should expose more languages to the students instead of having simple languages to learn. Students should learn languages not restricted to European speakers. We should learn more world languages.

If many languages are offered around the world, there would be more unity and tolerance because students and even teachers would have more knowledge of many countries.