R ECENTLY a friend of mine who is a well-known surgeon called me up. want to consult you about my children's education, he said. Knowing that Norma is four and Eddie Jr. three, I was a bit nonplussed. After all, I'm a university professor of languages, not a kindergarten expert. But the tie-up came to light when I saw him. could easily endow my children with ten thousand dollars each, he said; I would much rather endow them with an art, a skill, a second string to their bow--something that will stick with them and do them some good in their future careers, whatever these may be. I have thought of endowing them with languages-not languages as they are learned in high school and college, but languages as they used to be learned by so many people in Europe, from childhood, so that the recipient grows up with them, easily, naturally, spontaneously and, above all, conversationally. I'm thinking of taking on three governesses, each of whom will speak a different language to them for a certain part of their day. You are an expert on language-learning. What do you think about it? Needless to say, I thought very highly of his scheme. Will they really learn the languages that way? they'll learn to speak them like natives. Will it interfere with their English? in the slightest. At their age, they can pick up any number of languages, and speak them all like natives, without the mutual interference you get later on. Will they stick? Here was the poser. Yes, they would stick, provided they were constantly practiced in later years. Like every other kind of skill, languages grow stale if you do not use them. It is a commonplace to hear a man say, was born in Germany, and spoke nothing but German for the first six years of my life. Then my parents brought me to America. I learned English, didn't use my German, and now I've forgotten it. This was the rub, but my friend decided to take the chance that in later years, after the governesses were gone, his children would get or make conversational opportunities. Today Norma and Eddie Jr. are learning Russian, French and German, by the direct conversational method, from three different governesses. They will grow up, like the children of many European families, not merely bilingual but quadrilingual. And with no apparent effort on their part. Not everybody can find or afford three foreign governesses, or even one. But what can be done by an individual with hundreds of dollars for his own children can certainly be duplicated by State Education Departments, with millions of dollars, for everybody's children.