Jon

My 7 year old has taken beginner ballet once a week for a couple of years. Now the school is recommending adding more ballet classes as well as jazz. For financial and time reasons, I don't think that it is possible to go more than 2 or 3 times per week. Is it best to spend all of those sessions solely on ballet classes at this age, or better to take a variety such as 1 ballet, 1 jazz, and 1 hip hop?

The UN languages are Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish. Should any of these be dropped and replaced by other languages? How would you justify each of the six languages instead of other important languages such as Japanese, German, Portuguese, Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Malay-Indonesian?

After already learning Russian and Polish to a conversational level, which Slavic language is best to learn? Serbo-Croatian or Ukrainian?

Has English completely obliterated French and become the second language that everyone learns first? Or are there still large numbers of people who choose to learn French as their second language without learning English? Are there any regional lingua franca's left other than English?

Ballet teachers often say that ballet is the foundation of all forms of dance, and therefore, all students should start by learning ballet before other forms of dance. However, I have noticed that many hip hop dancers have become quite good without ever learning any ballet.

Is it true that ballet is the foundation of dance? How so? Or is this just a story that ballet teachers tell because they personally prefer ballet and need to recruit students and they don't really like having to teach hip hop?

I have spent several years learning Russian as my first foreign language. Now, I have gotten to the point where I am comfortable speaking in the language and want to start learning a second foreign language. Most people say that I should learn Spanish next, as it is a major world language and relatively easy to learn. However, a few others suggest staying with Slavic languages and learning Polish. Is Spanish or Polish a better language to learn after Russian?

I have a six year old who is interested in dancing with me all of the time. I would put her in ballroom dancing classes, but there are no kids ballroom classes. Just private instruction. There are lots of girls in the ballet, jazz, tap, and hip hop classes. She is very social and seems to prefer partner dancing, though. Should I let her take private ballroom lessons and practice with me at home? Or should I put her in the more common ballet classes with other kids and make her wait until she's an adult to take ballroom?