Early Ed Watch also riffs off the report on how young children can best be helped to learn English while retaining their home language. If children who speak Spanish or other languages at home can learn English why can't English speakers learn a second language, before they hit middle school? This is an area that doesn't get talked about enough. Children in China and much of Asia start learning English as soon as they start school. (One exception is India, where longstanding government policy that goes back to independence, prevents the teaching of English. That is one of the reasons private education is burgeoning in India--parents want their kids to learn English.)