Kevin Carey wonders whether American students should learn a (or multiple) foreign language(s). His view? Nope.
Not that I think studying language is a waste of time. I just would have been better off spending that time studying this language, doubling up on English literature, writing, rhetoric, etc. I know that students in other countries around the world are generally much more likely to study multiple languages. But that’s partially a function of geography–places like Europe are much more multi-lingual. And it’s partially because they’re not here. If there was a huge country somewhere else that dominated the world’s economy, culture, and commerce, I’d want to learn their language. But I live in that country, so I don’t have to. English has become the world’s lingua franca. I once stood in line in a Parisian department store behind a German tourist arguing with French saleswoman about the price of a purse. They bickered in English–it was the only language they could both speak. I can see how foreign languages are important if you’re running a huge multinational corporation like UPS, but that’s not exactly a typical case.
None of this means we should stop teaching foreign languages in public schools. It seems like an important choice to offer, and it wouldn’t make sense to shut people off from the opportunity. All else being equal, students are undoubtedly better off knowing multiple languages than just one. But there are lots of things they’re better off knowing than not knowing, the question is which of those things are most important. If foreign languages go onto that list, something else has to come off. It’s not clear to me what that should be.
The article at Time that raised the issue in the first place.
Right now we’re aiming too low. Competency in reading and math — the focus of so much No Child Left Behind testing — is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here’s what they are:
Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, whether they know it or not, and they need to behave that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are “global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages” — not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.
Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economy — the ones that won’t get outsourced or automated — “put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos,” says Marc Tucker, a lead author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. That’s a problem for U.S. schools, which have become less daring in the back-to-basics climate of No Child Left Behind. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that’s where most new breakthroughs are made. It’s interdisciplinary combinations — design and technology, mathematics and art — “that produce YouTube and Google,” says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.
Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what’s coming at them and distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t. “It’s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it,” says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.
Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today’s workplace. “Most innovations today involve large teams of people,” says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. “We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures.”
Ezra Klein’s view (a blogger I greatly respect by the way) is for you to read here.
My view?
A superpower that stops being interested in the world surrounding it, a superpower that has become so arrogant that it believes that everyone should speak the language spoken in before-mentioned superpower, is in the very real danger of alienating the entire world and it seems not, umh, very smart to me, close one’s borders for information and knowledge from other countries.
There is more to it than just ‘money’ (whether or not people will use it in their professional career). There is also the aspect of, as the original article points out, globalization and of personal development. To be able to read Goethe in German…
Trust me, the original is always better than a translation.
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