Bronx High School of Science, one of the city's top magnet schools, is suddently in a pickle (or is that kimchee?) with Korean parents. The NY Sun reports that parents have raised more than $100,000 to start a promisd Korean language program at the school, but the school has only offered an elective since. There are lots of questions, like why did the school accept checks from parents while the Department of Education denies any knowledge of them and why did parents fundraise when donated money cannot pay for teachers. The school did give back $70,000 in donations from Jwin Electronics, but the DOE can't seem to account for thousands of dollars from other organizations, like the Korean Embassy and LG Electronics. And then there's this:
Interest in the matter has even extended to the West Coast. A professor at UCLA, Ailee Moon, is the president of the Foundation for Korean Language and Culture, which contributed $5,000 and flew to New York to review the program with the principal in February of this year. Ms Moon was concerned that only the one course was offered.
Ms. Moon says that she was upset when the principal told her that she didn't believe it was good for Korean students to study the Korean language. Ms. Moon pointed out to the principal that students of Hispanic background are given no such admonition.
Yeah - and what about Latin - no one speaks that anymore!
According to Bronx Science's class listings, there are many foreign languages classes in French, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Italian, Russian and Spanish (there are two in Korean). Wow, what happened to German?
