A Case for Portuguese in the High Schools

Abstract

Very few high schools in the United States exist and do provide a strong link in the educacurrently offer Portuguese as part of the regular tional chain of American young people is stroncurriculum. Aside from areas of Portuguese ingen today that it has been for a long time. Along migrant concentration-California and the new with this new awareness has also come the realEngland states, only Texas has made inroads into ization that other languages-besides those cointhe establishment of high school programs in monly taught-need attention. It is here that we, Portuguese. Through its federally funded proin Portuguese, encounter our opportunities. gram, ALCANCE, the University of Texas has Portuguese is one of the official less-coinbegun training many high school teachers to start monly-taught languages. Still listed in all govand to develop Brazilian Portuguese programs at eminent publications as a critical language, local schools. Since the picture for Portuguese in Portuguese currently ranks, along with Asian the high schools is dim, and because the national languages, as a priority to be developed in the economic situation is such that it is hardly advisschools. The National Endowment for the Huable to begin anything new that costs money, inanities, in its new Foreign Language Initiative,