To the editor:

Si vous pouvez comprendre ceci, c’est parce que vous avez eu la chance d’apprendre une langue étrangère. Nos enfants ne méritent-ils pas d’avoir la même chance que nous? Translation: “If you can understand this, it’s because you had the opportunity to learn a foreign language. Don’t our children deserve the same opportunity?”
Our town’s foreign language programs are once again on the cutting block at a time when our country is striving for more positive engagement with the rest of the world to meet our shared challenges. Surely those challenges will be easier to overcome if we understand each other and each other’s culture.
It is particularly disappointing and shortsighted that French instruction is being targeted for elimination. Have we forgotten that one-third of the population of Maine is of French and Canadian descent or that we share a border with a French-speaking province of over 8 million people – people with whom we might want to interact for cultural or economic reasons?
Ultimately, foreign language instruction is about preparing our children to live and thrive in an increasingly globalized and multicultural world. Put simply, it is a lesson that we can’t afford not to teach.

Roger and Jacqueline Doiron
Scarborough