Hindi Proponents Want It Taught in Silicon Valley Public Schools
By Sharon Simonson
FREMONT, Calif.—Hindi may soon supplant Western European tongues such as German and Portuguese as a staple of the public high-school curriculum, at least in Silicon Valley.
Moved by passion for culture and elevated by a rapidly rising Asian-Indian population, a cadre of Indian-American women in Fremont has worked for seven years to satisfy California’s requirements to bring a new language into public schools. In a major advance this fall, the Teacher Education Department at California State University, East Bay, enrolled its first student seeking to gain her primary California teacher certification in Hindi language instruction.
With its new status, Hindi’s track in California public education diverges from Telugu and Tamil, two other widely spoken Indian lang...