I mean the whole school I went through kept nailing in our heads how much a foreign language would benefit you. I guess this went under the noses of whoever like teaching kids to balance a checkbook.
Hah!
We can barely teach kids English.
Why?
The answer is Republicans want to fund Christian schools instead, with various variations of extra steps.
In my own experience, if you pick up another language but don’t use it on an at least a semi-regular basis, your skills in it get real rusty real fast.
That’s why it’s a fucking robbery when bilingual parents refuse to teach their kids a second language. Sadly happens a lot in the US with Spanish
To be fair it’s tough to be proficient in a language you don’t get to use. In some places in the US, there’s plenty of Spanish speaking people. Other than that not so much.
Everyone coming up with conspiratorial reasons why this is not the case but it’s much simple than that. It’s not feasible and it’s expensive and the returns aren’t really worth it.
Kids in school have a bunch of other subjects they have to learn besides foreign languages. You can add one or two languages but then at some point you will need to remove other subjects to add more or you need to keep kids in school even more. Both are not really feasible. Then you need to hire teachers for all these new languages which most places won’t do.
Another issue is with the way they teach languages in schools. They expect you to pass a test and not actually learn the language so a lot of the languages will not “stick” as the students lack immersion and practice with that language. I can speak for myself, I have learned two languages besides my native language in school: French and English. I had French since 2nd grade, which is 10 years of French classes and English since 5th grade which is 7 years of English classes. Today I can speak English fluently and like 3 words of French. The difference was that I was always immersed in English, though video games, movies, songs and so on. Not so much with French. I have noticed the same pattern with most of my friends and family members.
Do Americans really not learn any other languages in school? I was under the impression that Spanish lessons were part of the public school system down there. I’m not trying to be rude I’m genuinely asking
Even for a wealthier state like New York, often thought of as more progressive on stuff like this, the actual requirements are a joke. You can just take a year of a language in 8th grade, pass the local test that meets the curriculum’s criteria, and never touch it again all the way to graduation from high school. At least when I was in school, they would at least try to dissuade you from not continuing it at least one more year to get on track for some sort of special diploma, but you could just opt out if your parents gave the okay to your guidance counselor.
Wow thats honestly pretty crazy to me. To me this is like learning Americans don’t learn geometry in school or something. Language learning should be an essential part of any public education system
Guys should we tell them?
You guys don’t learn geometry either?
Although it’s been shown learning another language as a child changes the way your mind works, there’s only so much money in the teaching budget and so many hours in the day. Conservatives want to take both from our kids, for their own ends, so justifying the value of the resources to the student is a perennial challenge.
Given the low proficiency of current grads with their first language, and basic skills like punctuation and spelling, I say we’re a LONG way before we can open a second language in the curriculum.
Because education in the USA is a sad joke? Republicans have been hollowing out education for the past 5 decades or so and they worked hard trying to shove fundamentalist christianity in schools and science classes specifically
The US is tucked and can get fucked
Because the system is designed to make it so you never leave and you never have the upper hand.
English has 1.5B fluent speakers spread across the entire globe. Hardly an insular language.
This is far more about discrimination - freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services, segregating English speakers from minority speakers, abolishing First Nations language and culture.
Also very important to keep Americans from reading foreign language press.
I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all
Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward
I don’t think it’s an impossible task to get students quality language instruction that gets them on track to proficiency in a given foreign language. It’s doable, and people manage to do so all the time. The issue is more that people often don’t see the benefits of it in their daily lives where English suffices for everything, and they most certainly don’t see enough of a benefit that they wouldn’t collectively lose their shit over a proposed property tax hike intended to adequately fund foreign language instruction in the local school district. They’ll gladly fork over a few million dollars in tax money to trick out the football field, but to hire enough new teachers to have kids start learning French in 3rd grade and continue until graduation? Not a chance in hell. Ditto for French-language media purchases for the school library, or any other auxiliary purchases that would facilitate a genuine attempt at teaching and learning a foreign language.
to be done right it has to be done early. This means parents or schools have to choose the languages learned. It needs to be immersive to. Schools will have to have teachers for every language. That can be expensive. Its a bit easier with non english speaking countries as they generally teach english and like catholic schools at one time taught latin. Now personally I would love the whole world to standardize on one sign language and teach that so that in a generation or two everyone would be able to communicate.
That would be good, and in line with Plains Sign Language’s legacy. It was created as a trade language and adopted by the deaf. That said, sign languages are living languages and without much mass communication in them they drift pretty hard and fast. All said Plains would be a really cool choice, but French Sign Language (LSF) would probably be the most practical choice.
So yeah, if everyone could agree on a sign language to learn, my deaf ass is in.
well us adults would likely never really see the benefit but as I said in a generation or two it would be huge.
It hasn’t really been an economic necessity or cultural priority like other countries.
Most countries who have a population who speak more than one language usually either have a variety of languages spoken within/near the country or rely on ESL speakers to participate in the international workforce.
With English being the current lingua franca, Americans already know the current dominant language. There is really only one major language which is relevant to neighbors, but Americans are usually in the more dominant economic position and there is a cultural aversion to adopting Spanish more.
This is the correct answer.
If you live in SE Asia for example you speak your local language at home but you need to learn English for work.
If you already speak English at home then you already know how to speak English at work.
Learning a second language might open perspectives and expose children to ideas. The GOP can’t afford such smart kids.
Ok so well then all the work is on OUR kids then and not the rest of the worlds kids to learn American? Why is the world so unfair to USA? We are too big of a country, it is unrealistic to learn languages, even one is hard given how rural and unique the American countryside is. The only hope we have is if pickup trucks evolve to be able to speak for us and keep us connected when we finally become unable to learn even a single language.
The US is allergic to other languages. Hell, it’s even allergic to English depending on where you look. It’s all just part of the government’s plan to keep people stupid.
Texan here. 2 years in HS was required when I was there. I took Latin.
Capitalism relies on dumber citizens, don’t seek anything more than consumerism, work consume and die. Otherwise they would teach financial education in school too.
