Charting the Course: Hebrew Language in Public Schools
Source: Contact: The Journal of the Jewish Life Network, Vol.13/no.2, page 10
The author describes efforts to map the public high schools across the country that offer Hebrew as a foreign language option in their language curricula. She states that no one has compiled a list of schools, or created a framework for teachers, or developed a set of central standards as exists for other language instruction. The programs are a scattered, uncoordinated and unexamined resource.
However, her research has located Hebrew programs in 30 high schools (and one junior high school) in 20 cities in more than 12 states. The framework of Hebrew in the public high school was a dream of some of the founding figures of contemporary American Jewish education in the early part of the last century. The author argues that as we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, this dream has a chance of becoming a reality.