Abstract
It is only in recent times that Spanish has taken its place properly alongside of French and German. In the year 1766 Paul Fook gave at Harvard the first lesson in Spanish ever given in the United States. However, the real "beginning of a serious Spanish program in school life began in 1816 when Abril Smith bequeathed $20,000 to Harvard to establish the teaching of Spanish. By 1819 this fund was in operation and the beloved George Ticknor took the post of Spanish teacher under this bequest.|Over thirty years elapsed before it was thought that Spanish had any place in the curriculum of a high • school, but in 1852 the English high school in Boston introduced the study of Spanish into its regular curriculum. The interest in the subject remained rather dormant till the study of all modern languages underwent a Renaissance about 1890 in which Spanish naturally participated. In 1910 the study of Spanish began an independent upward swing until today over twenty per cent of the total foreign language portion of public high school enrollment are studying Spanish. The cause for this, according to Frederick Luquiens, seemed to be a crystallization of the traditional distrust of the value of French and the terror of the difficulties of German which made many students willing to risk Spanish. Though this attitude is unjustifiable, the attitude is nevertheless present today so it is for us to capitalize the situation. Consequently there are 129,240 boys and 139,270 girls studying Spanish in the public high schools today.