Why Choose a Bilingual Education?
If you have ever watched a young child play a complex game of make-believe, ask multiple questions about a simple topic, or explore the natural world with pure wonder and excitement, you know that early childhood is a magical time in a child’s life.
Young children have an amazing capacity to learn, adapt, and accept new ideas and perspectives with ease -- much more naturally than teenagers or adults.
That is because from infancy until the age of 12, a child’s mind is incredibly flexible -- the brain has not yet set rigid knowledge paths, and it can constantly pass from one mental structure to another.
This makes early childhood the ideal time to learn a second language.
When children learn two or more languages from a young age, they widen their realms of perception and attention, creating linguistic structures that will benefit them throughout life. The bilingual child is a better student, performs at a higher level, and acquires the intellectual acumen and qualities that educational institutions and businesses value.
The lifelong benefits of a bilingual education that begins in childhood include:
- Improved cognitive development: Bilingual education has been shown to improve cognitive skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, reading comprehension, and creativity.
- Enhanced language proficiency: Bilingual education helps students develop proficiency in more than one language, allowing them to communicate with a wider range of people.
- Improved cultural understanding and awareness: Bilingual education helps students develop an appreciation for diverse cultures and a greater understanding of the world.
- Improved academic achievement: Studies have shown that bilingual students have higher academic achievement, better grades, and perform better on standardized tests than their monolingual peers.
- Increased career opportunities: Bilingualism can lead to increased job opportunities and higher earning potential, especially in today's global economy.
- Better cognitive flexibility: Bilingual education can help improve cognitive flexibility and increase mental agility, which can benefit students in many areas of life.
The benefits of the bilingual brain
Why French?
- French is spoken by 125 million people in more than 40 countries.
- French as a foreign language is the second most commonly taught language in the world (after English).
- Most American universities require knowledge of at least one foreign language.
- French is the second most-studied foreign language in U.S. higher education institutions (after Spanish).
At the French American School of Princeton, our challenging, creative dual-language program prompts children to speak fluently, think differently, and adapt easily as they become critical, independent thinkers and well-rounded global citizens.