Bucking Trend, Berkeley to Add 30 Foreign-Language Courses

February 15, 2011, 2:28 pm

The University of California at Berkeley will add 30 foreign-language courses this fall, the university announced today. The added course sections, in Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, and other languages, come as some other colleges are cutting foreign-language courses and majors.

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willismg

Why not with all those out of work language professors that can be had on the cheap…
sbalik

Does your husband not perform any of these tasks when you are home? Sounds like that might be the problem. When I leave town by myself (which I do 2-3 times a year for conferences, etc.), I’m not concerned about whether my husband can manage my kids’ schedules, feed them, dress the younger one, and run any necessary errands. He does all of these things anyway on a regular basis, as do I!
a_vaillancourt

My husband is no slacker; we’ve simply established a division of labor based on our strenghs and preferences. I cook. He does laundry. I pay the bills. He pulls weeds. I edit English assignments. He coaches on Calculus homework.
astutzman

Speaking as a very involved husband and father, I find that the whole “division of labor” that I often see with my peers is a bit skewed. I find that things like getting the kids dressed, changing diapers, and general cleaning always fall towards the mother/wife of the partnership. This is not an attack on your husband, but is aimed at most of my peers and even the Entertainment industry that continually shows us caricatures of men that can’t handle the “domestic duties” of a household. I get so disgusted a guys I know that refer to watching their own kids as “babysitting”.
http://twitter.com/mariashine Maria Shine Stewart

You make many good points here but all the posts seem remote from my experience. Overlooked often in these discussions is the medically fragile child. I never expected to have one, and — yes — my (public relations/writing) career was rerouted. I made a conscious decision that I wanted to be the person able to medicate my child in infancy…I would not delegate that. If I worked, I needed to generally be near due to the nature of his health concerns. I made some exceptions, but that was my modus operandi. Each step along the way, I realized that (as my son’s health issues episodically deepened and improved at various intervals) I was just one person. My students were never compromised; they got the best from me. These are tough professional choices. What to do is never one size fits all.
lotsoquestions

I’m almost 50, and I think it’s hard for people of our generation to buy into the notion that mom and dad are interchangeable, mostly because we weren’t raised that way.

When my kids were little, I remember being worried (probably irrationally so) that my husband wouldn’t be able to find the place he was supposed to take the child to in my absence. (This was before GPS, but after Mapquest). I actually printed out directions to all their playdates, lessons, birthday parties, etc. — along with a cheat sheet with the parents’ names and pertinent facts (such as the fact that one family had a big dog which they would put in the basement while our daughter was there since she was afraid of him, but only if you reminded them).

I think it’s A LOT easier once the kids can talk well and provide that sort of info themselves. I had a research trip last summer and my mom filled in for me at home, and she was amazed at the fact that my kids could give her directions to everywhere they needed to go, actually knew their own schedules for sports practice, etc., were capable of packing water and a snack for the practice, and the fact that they could do laundry and cook. Meanwhile, my sister in law’s kids aren’t allowed to get their own glass of water since she’s worried they’ll mess up her kitchen. I think lots of people who overparent do it because of their own psychological hangups and not because the spouse or kids requires it.