In my not-so-esteemed opinion, I think that educating students should be one of this country's top priorities (ranked under nuclear weapons, terrorism, and world hunger, of course). "The children are the future..." and all that jazz. However, for the students of this country to be educated in the best possible way, it is imperative that schools be equipped with the best teachers that money can buy.
This morning, while dozing through my 8am Spanish 1 class, my professor who - for the sake of her embarrassment - shall remain nameless was reviewing for the test that our class was having on Friday. We were reviewing cognitive adjectives and she came across the word "reading" - a clear mistake on the part of
spanish lab inc. It took my professor about five minutes for her to fully understand that "reading" was a verb and not pronounced "redding".
I am the last person to criticize someone who is in an authoritative position. Chances are, they did something important to get there and as of right now, I haven't. That being said, I can not seem to rid my brain of the fact that in order for a person to teach Spanish in an English-speaking country, that they should be able to speak English, and very well. My teacher has been in the United States for 12 years, and while she speaks Spanish beautifully - because it was her first language, her English is really only sub-par.
All I have to say, is that it's a good thing I've taken up to Spanish 3, because if I actually had to count on this woman to make me become bilingual, I would be screwed.
