Or open up job prospect and educational value?
Because your leaders don’t care if you succeed or die in a hole in the ground.
Statistically Americans can barely read and write English at an adult level…
The general idea of school is to learn how to learn. Most of the core subjects are just the tip of their iceberg.
Take the older software devs who didn’t have computers in school when they went. They technically use almost nothing they actually studied in school. So you don’t really want to requie an overload on any given subject. Schools are even dialing back the math requirements. Like pre-calc. Not everyone needs that. The required algebra is more about problem solving than equations now. Which is good. Let the kids follow thier interests a little more.Limited time and resources means ypu can’t learn everything.
Is there a lot to improve and should certain subjects be switched for others? Sure. But does learning 4 languages to a very basic degree (which you will likely almost never use and therefore forget) important enough to kick off other subjects? I don’t think so.
Fun fact: You can learn without school. There’s sooo much information outside of school walls, and it’s easier to access now than ever in the history of humanity.
But learning in school gives you people to communicate with in the new language. Something that can be tougher to find on your own.
There are language exchange sites and apps for that. Lots of people learn languages just as a fun hobby, and there are many resources out there for it
When did one foreign language become required?
It’s not.
In America, by far and away the next most commonly spoken language is Spanish. I could see a requirement making it so schools are made to teach Spanish, but I find it hard to see requiring them to teach any other language. Arguably, this might be better managed on the State level, since certain languages may be more common in different states.
Yep. I imagine Spanish is much more useful in Texas than in Alaska
You really are asking too much here
We need to get math, geography, literature, history, writing, personal finance, and driving training working again first
Want to know what my drivers ed consisted of?
Not cars, no
A signature of consent and having me/my class to view unredacted images and video of a girl who some of the people in that room personally knew from that very highschool who didn’t wear a seatbelt screaming with her face having been peeled off having passed through the windshield, and similar gory aftermath images
Thats the educational bar of competence we’re competing with here at least nearly two decades ago. You think it’s gotten better or worse since then?
- most people would find it useless, especially in areas not near any other country (most of the US)
- other courses would need to be dropped or the school year expanded (not happening). The cost would also be in acquiring and retaining the talent on top of books and other materials
- taxpayers would balk at this as they would also find it useless in most cases (why does our local welder need to Welsh to weld?)
I am a huge fan of language learning and, if I had my way, would make all high school graduates take at least six months and live in some country very different to their own (including language) to get them out of the USAmerican bubble, but that certainly isn’t happening.
I’m working on language number 5 myself (more if you count the ones I just tried to get to basic greetings, yes/no, etc. in).
most Americans don’t need any foreign language to pass high school.
And most don’t leave the country for vacations either
People do go to the Caribbean and Mexico, because they are within close travel distance. Most Americans could not afford a transatlantic vacation. You can take your whole family to Florida for a week just on the cost you’d spend on airfare going to Europe. It’s like $1000 per person per flight, 12 hour+ flight, 8+ hour time difference. A $10,000+ vacation is really not in the average American’s budget.
Yeah my high school said colleges would like for you to take a foreign language class, but it’s not required to graduate from here. Some students did think it was required to graduate and a couple I talked to at the time were surprised to learn I didn’t take any and still graduated.
At my high school you needed 2 communication credits, foreign languages counted, so did drama, journalism, year book, cheer squad (this always puzzled me as it was not even a class), and others I am sure I am forgetting as it was 30ish years ago.
11 states have foreign language requirements, but really we shouldn’t even count them. A single 20-30 minute class per day is not going to achieve any proficiency in a foreign language. The only way for an American child to actually achieve foreign language proficiency is to go to a 1/2 and 1/2 school.
I took 3 1/2 years of French in high school, but barely used it after graduation. I do wish we had more language learning in school.
In elementary school half of our day was taught in Spanish, but an ignorant parent (my mother) complained so loudly that the project was scrapped after only a couple months.
US classes are 20-30 minutes long?
It varies a lot from one school to another, at mine we did “block scheduling” so you had 4, 90 minute classes a day, and different classes 1st and 2nd semester
Which had its pluses and minuses. You could definitely get a lot more instruction time in during a class that way
But for something like a language, if you’re unlucky and your schedule works out that you had it first semester one year and second the next, you’re basically going a whole year where you may not have practiced those language skills.
Other schools around me I think usually had 45 or 60 minute classes, but sometimes electives which might include language might have gotten shorter timeslots than core classes
Because all you need to know is in the Bible. Earth is 6000 years old. Dinosaurs are an invention from the woke left. Jesus is white. That’s the curriculum for ya.
No. My high school was 6 55-minute classes with 5 minute breaks between to get to your next class, plus a 45-minute lunch. 7 classes if you elected to take another class starting at 7am instead of the usual 8am. School was just under 8 hours long with 7 classes.
No
Consequence of “general education”. School is only 6 hours per day. English, math, science, history, and gym are all required. That’s 5. Want to add health, sex ed, art, music, foreign language, programming, speech and debate, driver’s ed? The more you add, the more you have to shorten the classes. My school had a lot of curricular options, so my classes were short. If a school has less to offer, they may have longer classes.
US isn’t even teaching the 1 very well. 7th grade is way too late to begin that kind of learning.
7th grade? I never took a foreign language until 9th grade. I have two nephews, and both of them never took one until 10th.
Mine was 7th and 8th were each half of WhateverLanguage 1 course.
Not sure about other countries, but here in Norway, English lessons start in the 2nd grade (6-7 years old). It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s similar in the rest of Europe.
In Spain there are places where two languages are taught at once since the first minute. There are two official languages. And a third one is taught soon after that.
Basque, I’m guessing?
I think this is one of the reasons why people from English-speaking countries are less motivated to learn other languages; English is almost everywhere, to varying degrees.
It’s sort of a gift and a curse. I enjoy learning languages, but there’s no practical need for me to, so I’m bad at it 🙈
English starts in 3rd grade here and a second language like French or Spanish usually in 5th grade. Starting to learn foreign languages in high school is wild.
In Portugal, mandatory English classes start on the 5th grade, but from 1st grade kids have the option to take English classes as an extracurricular
What traveling? You don’t need 4 languages for Disney World/Land.
Clearly you haven’t been to EPCOT.
Learning a language helps develop the brain.
I can see the argument of more focus on a second language, but more languages usually means not enough for any of them.
My high school required 3 years of a language: I took 5 Spanish courses but was clearly never fluent.
In my kids high school, it was the first class in an immersion program program from early elementary through high school. Many of them were fluent. That should be a goal.
But how do we get the time for it in europe? We startet english in 3. Grade, french in 6. Grade and after that you could choose between spanish and science in 9. Grade in my school. Other people I know had Latin and old Greek or Dutch or polish.
A lot of people in this thread say its a waste of time to have a second language in the US, what do you learn in all this time you have??
It’s a waste of time to have a “survey” of languages in an environment where you’re not regularly using them : much better to learn an additional one well. Maybe it’s different in countries with multiple languages and borders where you’ll need multiple languages every day. Yes, a second language is a good idea for any kid.
Here school generally has a fixed curriculum through eighth grade, then high school is more flexible, with minimum requirements set by state and student choice filling it out. For example my state had a requirement for three years of languages to graduate high school: I decided on 5 Spanish classes.
My youngest kid took two years of Italian but then had to switch schools where they did not offer that language, so took a little Spanish. Yes I consider that somewhat a waste because it would have been better for him to learn either of those more. However in everyday life he’s not exposed to either.
I understand, that multiple languages are not needed in the US, but what I dont get is that there is until brazil just one main language other than english spoken. So why not make it mandatory to learn this language a little?
And I would argue that in school you just need to learn stuff for everyday life… For a lot of stuff I learnd in school I will be happy if i will need it once every half a decade.
And if that is something like having a little nice conversation with somebody who doesnt speak english, I say its helpful to learn.
The US doesn’t have a national language, but does have significant communities of many ethnicities. It is well recognized that a second language is beneficial and I have to assume most states require it, although my experience there is limited. However it’s not reasonable to mandate that everyone learn a specific one. You should learn the one specific to your circumstances.
That being said, most people have no reason to actually use the language they learned in school so are never fluent or lose it quickly. It’s a newer thing for schools to offer immersion programs to establish fluency
I mean, for one thing, high school lasts a finite amount of time
I honestly think it’s because in measures of distance, a US American could be considered well-traveled without ever having left the United States. Living in DC and visiting Florida or California is a big trip logistically. I love to travel and have moved a LOT and I have just barely been to every state in the US (some I only drove through, fuck rural Nebraska). While I disagree personally, I think that most Americans just don’t see the immediate utility in learning other languages.
Not learning Spanish in school as a requirement at this point is just racism, though.
I grew up in the shittiest state and even we took Spanish. Middle school though. I’d say if we ever get through this racist fest, the basics of French, Spanish, and Chinese would be nice in elementary. Maybe with more advanced options for Spanish in later years since that’s our best chance for cultural immersion if they leave our Latina/Latino brothers and sisters alone for 5 seconds.
