Observer Online | Viewpoints

Posted June 7, 2002

Tom Grein

Dressing Right in School
Bits and pieces.
Standing in the arts and crafts section of the Herndon Festival this weekend I overheard a conversation between two women. They were talking about the dress codes certain schools have in Eastern Loudoun County for girls. The codes speak for themselves:
‘ Shorts on girls must be at least fingertip long;
‘ No bare midriffs;
‘ Underwear must be worn at all times.
OK, I can understand most of this, but underwear? Where are these girls' mothers if teachers must tell the students they have to put underwear on before coming to school? Isn't underwear, you know, like part of getting dressed in the morning?
How time changes.

Community Police
Fairfax County cops are trying something new this weekend at Celebrate Fairfax, the county's fair.
Two police officers will patrol the fairgrounds on inline skates, better known by the brand name, Rollerblades.
According to a press release, the positives are enhanced mobility and visibility, increased community relations, versatility and low cost. Police also say that the skates tend "to break down the barrier between citizens and officers and make them more approachable."
Fairfax County police officials also say that using the skates in areas with bike paths, large events and festivals and high crime areas are ideal locations.
Town of Herndon police already use bicycles on the paths and other areas, which make them both approachable and able to move through tight areas quickly. Inline skates, as well as bicycles, are not allowed on the Herndon Festival grounds.
But Rollerblades have their limitations. I can see it now: Two criminals standing on the golf course, just daring the police officers to roll on over the grass to nab them.
I can think of better ways of spending tax dollars.

Language Skills
Here are the top 10 languages spoken in the world (in millions of speakers), according to the World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2002, and reported in The Washington Post:
Chinese, Mandarin-874
Hindi-366
English-341
Spanish-322
Bengali-207
Arabic-201
Portuguese-176
Russian-167
Japanese-125
German-100
And here, according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 1998, is a sampling of the number of American college students registered to study foreign languages:
Spanish-656,590
French-199,064
German -89,020
Japanese-43,141
Chinese-28,456
Russian-23,791
Latin-26,145
Greek-16,402
Arabic-5,505
What is intriguing is that French, even though it doesn't register among the top 10 languages in the world, is the second most studied foreign language in America, and Greek and Latin, both "dead" languages, have quite a following.
Greek and Latin, of course, are the basis for many languages, one of the reasons they are taught and studied.
Chinese, the most spoken language in the world by far, comes in a distant fifth place among the studied languages, and Arabic, spoken by 201,000,000 people in the world, is studied by only 5,505 students in America.
The study does not show how many people study English as a foreign language around the world.
Is it no wonder U.S. government agencies such as the CIA and FBI have had trouble finding interpreters for critical languages such as Hindi and Arabic.
American education, to be competitive and to help secure our borders, must put great emphasis on language education.
It will be one of the bigger challenges for education during this century.
And that's Our Town this week.