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Education and Training

As a Council and through our Education Committee, we have advocated foreign language teaching and learning at every level of education and in lifelong learning.  At present French, Spanish, German, and Latin are taught in high schools as required by the NC State Department of Education.  We believe that this program should be expanded so as to include other languages and as well to be taught at elementary and middle school levels.  We recognize that language programs have for decades been implemented in US private schools as well as European, African, Middle Eastern and Asian public schools and colleges.

We have completed a Cost-Benefit Analysis of foreign language teaching.  In this we emphasize many benefits such as business applications, income enhancement, cultural awareness, vocabulary development and correlation with higher order cognition and creativity.  Costs may not exceed other intensive and lab classes.  We note that other NC counties have obtained grants to expand language programs.  A nearby example is Burke County, which received a federal FLAG (Foreign Language Application Grants) grant to hire a full-time German teacher of German at Freedom High School.

Furthermore, we advocate teaching of Middle East and Asian languages as well as European.  This responds to the presence of Asians in our communities, while American businesses are doing more and more export/import business with Asia.  We also applaud world language teaching at local libraries and at community colleges.

We coordinate with local organizations such as Hickory City Council, Catawba County Chamber of Commerce, ethnic organizations, and cultural-religious associations to promote these important educational and cultural objectives.

 

To leave a message for a member of the Hickory International Council call 828-326-0264.
For more information, contact:

Staff liaison Mary Sizemore at 828-304-0500 x7275 or by e-mail
Chair, Hani Nassar at 828-234-6330 or by e-mail.

 

 

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