According to Superintendent Cooley, it costs $190,000 a year to pay supervisors and teachers of the Norwegian and German languages, besides the cost of about two hundred classrooms; and as for the results obtained from the expenditure of this money, we imagine that $190,000 might as well be thrown to the wind. At the same time, kindergartens are threatened with being closed for lack of funds. With the limited instruction in German and Norwegian in the public schools, one would imagine that the pupils would be taught the rudiments of grammar and as much as possible of a vocabulary adapted for practical everyday use. This would bring some returns for the cost of Norwegian and German instruction and for the time that the pupils are devoting to their studies.

But instead of this, all that the pupils learn of these languages is to smear 2page after page full of Gothic letters; they learn to write the script which is somewhat different from the Latin script. To readers who know how instruction in foreign languages is carried on in other countries this must sound incredible and ridiculous, but it is true. The main part of the alleged instruction in the common school is to write Gothic script. In other countries nearly everyone speaks (good) German.

We have had letters from Amsterdam reading as follows: "Will you be kind enough to write your letters in Latin script; while everyone here in Amsterdam speaks and writes German, no one here can read the Gothic script very well." In other parts of Europe this is also the case; in Scandinavia the courses in German are thorough, as are courses in Norwegian in other countries. A youngster who has attended German and Norwegian classes in Chicago cannot do his work right if he does get a job with some export house. He has wasted all his school hours in learning to write Gothic script which is not used today in either Norway or Germany. And for this good-for-nothing instruction in Chicago 3we spend $190,000 per year in salaries.

If the writer had children who wanted to learn Norwegian or German, he would begin by not letting them take lessons in our public schools; that would at least prevent them from wasting a lot of time. The School Board does not care how much money it wastes; all they worry about is getting the Norwegian and German vote. We think Norwegian and German should be abolished in the public schools to save the kindergarten.