
The US should remove foreign language education requirements - robertwiblin
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/foreign-language-education.html
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mikeash
Completely backwards. Make it effective, don’t kill it. The obvious way to do
that is to _start early_. The typically US approach is to ignore foreign
languages until high school, when the child is well past their best years for
acquiring a new language. Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea?

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gizmo686
I went to a Jewish day school as a child. We had Hebrew classes from preschool
through 8th grade (after which point I switched to a secular high school).

At the end of 8th grade, I could still divide my class into two groups: people
who cannot speak Hebrew, and people who speak Hebrew at home.

In college, I took 2 semesters of Japanese. Guess which language I am stronger
at today. (Still no where near fluent).

We would not devote nearly enough time in school to teach children a second
language.

~~~
mikeash
It’s obviously possible, since lots of countries do it with English. Let’s do
it right.

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majormajor
This reasoning sounds silly. There are plenty of people who don't remember
much of anything from geography, history, spelling, geometry, algebra, etc,
either, so should we simply get rid of 90% of school?

Or is there a purpose served by this stuff even if it doesn't lead to long-
term recall?

For instance, exposure to a broad range of things so you can find your
interests and speak more intelligently about at least some of them, in the
future (even if that just means remembering what to look up that you realize
you forgot). Or just learning how to study various different types of things
in the first place, so that when you _do_ need to get serious about something,
you aren't hopeless.

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jeffreyrogers
The person being quoted (Bryan Caplan) does actually make similar claims to
what you're saying. His claim is that most people use very little of what they
learn in school and that the main thing that school does is show you're smart
because you were able to graduate. So instead of making kids waste time
learning stuff they're just going to forget (or never really learn as in the
case of foreign languages), we should strip down the school curriculum and
only teach them things relevant to their future life.

~~~
majormajor
I think that learning to study stuff - especially when it's not obviously
relevant or interesting at first - is incredibly relevant to later in life.

I also don't think we'd be great at predicting the 10% that's "most relevant"
for any given person. It's like the "reinventing Excel" problem - everyone
only uses 10%, but everyone uses a _different_ 10%.

I think we should try to shorten the school curriculum - give some more
purpose to people's ages 15-20 years, instead of filling it up with busywork
while they're at their most restless and energetic - but not reduce it's
breadth at all. Cramming extracurriculurs into every hour of the day to fill
up time to tick boxes for a college application is a _much_ bigger problem
than foreign language classes, in my mind.

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ardit33
Starting really early is the key. I am Albanian and grew up watching Italian
TV, and learned Italian as a kid. Only took two semesters of Italian classes,
yet the language ability (especially reading and comprehension) is still there
30 years later. It takes just a bit longer to kick my speaking abilities into
gear. (Usually a couple of days when visiting).

I did take two years of German lessons (High school and college), and
unfortunately I forgot it by now.

The key is: 1) Start really early (6 or 7 years old) and 2) Immersion is key.
Learn by being immersed int the language (either TV, living in the country,
etc).

When I visited Sweden and Denmark, I couldn’t find anybody that didn’t know
English well. Everyone was really good at it, and I suspect is part of the
reason that Sacandinavian countries have better living standards than
Germany/France/Spain, where it was very often hard to communicate in English.

English is the de-facto business language, and while as an American you can
get by without knowing a foreign language, knowing one well is huge asset to
your life _.

One pro-tip: the best language to learn is the language from a country that
you like the culture. You can really know a language by only being immersed in
the culture as well.

_By being an asset I mean it allows you to be able to move to a country with a
lot less friction. Eg. knowing German well, it opens your world and ability to
do business life locally and live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland without
the huge penalty if you didn't know the language.

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post-
The problem with this view is that foreign language education isn't about the
language per se (although that's a bonus if you manage to get good), it's
about providing a vehicle for understanding history and culture in context.

Latin is a favorite punching bag in this discussion, and I don't want to argue
about the practical benefit of _speaking_ Latin right now. But learning to
_read_ Latin is learning how to deal with long, difficult, and poorly defined
problems---skills that translate (no pun intended) to almost any field.

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tlb
The most interesting axiom here is that if something can't be taught well, it
shouldn't be taught at all.

I took French (as was required in Canada), which was taught badly. For 2 years
we had a teacher who didn't actually speak French, but taught vocabulary out
of the textbook. I also took a year of Latin, which was taught well by an
inspiring teacher. I'm sure I got more value out of Latin, even though
speaking French is occasionally useful.

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HarryHirsch
Whoever has learned French can read French literature. It's puzzling that the
idea of school exposing the children to culture and broadening their mind
never occurs to Alex Tabarrok. Why does everything have to serve the job
market?

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jeffreyrogers
He's not saying that's not a good thing. He's saying it's a waste of time to
do it in school because school doesn't teach people to learn languages.

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munk-a
So maybe he'd be happy if we just upped the teaching methods to provide more
effective learning?

The US is doing pretty terribly in scholarship right now so I can understand
the frustration coming from how little the money we do spend tends to effect
things, but the conclusion that we need to save that money as well seems
pretty wrong-headed.

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jeffreyrogers
What non-multilingual country (e.g. Switzerland) manages to teach foreign
languages (other than English) to a reasonable degree of competence to a
substantial portion of its population? I can't name one.

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kris-s
I was required to take 5 years of Spanish it was a huge drag and I learned
next to nothing. I lived in South Korea for one year and my Korean is far far
better. Foreign language learning requires immersion and motivation - both of
which are absent in a normal high school class.

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Karishma1234
"restriction" is always bad when it comes to education. If it is coming from
far away places like DC or Sacramento it is even worse.

These restrictions are particularly bad for the minority and vulnerable
groups. That black kid being raised by a single mother doing 3 jobs will do
much better if he does not have to learn that extra language which he wont use
any ways. His time is better spent on English and Math.

On other hand asians kids can easily learn 2-3 languages. My kid knows
English, Spanish, Bangla, Hindi very fluently for her age while she is taking
extra classes in Japanese (because her friends are taking it). I have time and
money to support her academic ambitions but forcing them on everyone seems
highly unjust.

These decisions must be left to local school and parents.

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HarryHirsch
_That black kid being raised by a single mother doing 3 jobs will do much
better if he does not have to learn that extra language which he wont use any
ways_

The counterargument is that the child from underprivileged background is
better served by Spanish instruction because he won't have the family support
(and Latina nanny) that a child from a wealthy family has.

It's an ongoing problem at my institution. The students, many of whom are
first-generation students, are accepted into their science program and a huge
number has serious deficiencies in basic algebra! Differential calculus is
completely out of the question. If you don't offer the opportunity at school
you are cementing in the two-class society.

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jeffreyrogers
Most people are responding saying: but knowing a foreign language has lots of
benefits. That's true and not the argument being made. The argument being made
is almost no one learns a foreign language in school so that time is wasted

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ghaff
In all fairness, it appears that people do reasonably learn foreign languages
(English in particular) when they start earlier and it's a priority. Of
course, in the case of the US, that would require doubling down teaching
something that won't have value for a lot of people.

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amaccuish
We've done this partly in the UK. It's not good, people are lazy and expect
everyone to speak Egnlish, which may be the case in business, but not always,
and there's always more opprtunities when you can find and speak to clients in
their native language.

As others have said, languages are much wider than grammer and vocab books,
you learn so much. I've noticed I tend to have diffirent thought patterns and
attitudes to things depending on the language I'm speaking or thinking in,
it's bizarre and amazing at the same time. And I now know far more about
english grammar than I ever learned in english lang classes.

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mozumder
I took 1 year of Russian in school and I still know how to read Cyrillic a
little, but don't know all the words. And for some reason, I can also make out
Greek because of it.

Early immersion is probably best way to teach foreign languages.

~~~
gnl
The Cyrillic script (used in many Slavic languages, including Russian,
Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian) was developed by a medieval Bulgarian
scholar (Clement of Ohrid) as a simplification of the older Glagolitic script
and was/is based in part on the Greek alphabet.

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yayana
People underestimate the value of learning the structure of the process of
learning a foreign language as early as possible..

I noticed in university that most high school subjects have about 2 years of
daily curriculum that a university can magically squeeze into one semester of
3 hours a week for the students that missed it or failed to learn it.. So
maybe university should start at eighth grade? Or maybe what needs to be fixed
is more fundamental than foreign language; it's not much worse than the high
school teaching of any subject with enough variation that a child doesn't see
a social expectation applying to most adults.

Personally, I think mandatory school levels should offer Esperanto, which
students can use to survive any European language in university and as a
structure to learn later in life when they have a better idea what they want
to learn.

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sailfast
Without language options in school I would not be a Spanish speaker today. I
love speaking spanish. I continued to speak it in college.

Outside of general value, it's also a great tool for life and work. It allows
me to appreciate other cultures, travel, and (oh by the way) communicate with
a great deal of Americans in a more effective way. I dare say if I was a line
manager at most restaurants or in the agricultural field these days it would
be a damned-near critical skill. I get not making it mandatory, but to not
teach it at all seems like dereliction.

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mc32
Back when I went to school, they still had Latin as well as Greek as options
in addition to French and Spanish. Wish I had chosen Latin over Spanish. Back
then Chinese wasn’t available, unfortch.

That said I agree with author. Foreign langs don’t help non native speakers of
foreign Lang land jobs. It’s virtually useless with job prospects.

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existencebox
Something like 9 years of Latin for me, between elementary school and
college... The only thing I might have traded it for was Chinese, and even
then I'd have liked to take both (ended up doing Japanese instead because
there was a class for it) before dropping Latin. I'm saddened to hear "Still
had Latin" in the context that schools are dropping it. I'm hard pressed to
think of another concentration that benefited me so much later in life.
(Across public speaking/oratory skills, Vocabulary/flexibility of speech, and
ability to parse/extrapolate novel content in both my own and similar
languages)

The article entirely misses the point of why it was beneficial to me. It gave
me a framework and practice using said framework for parsing and constructing
natural language content, in a way that no english/grammer class ever came
close (and we were crammed into those classes for FAR longer than I took
latin). Bluntly, I reject their entire hypothesis. The US needs to improve our
education system broadly, not axe yet another area in which we already fall
behind our international peers. (My wife speaks 2 languages fluently, 2 more
near-fluently, I am perpetually embarrassed by my own lack of worldliness next
to her.)

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alphabettsy
We’re doing it wrong, alternative languages should be offered throughout
school. For me, it was French only in Elementary then only Spanish in middle
school. HS has both. What kind of system is that?

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gnl
> Don’t make the mistake of arguing that knowing a second language has many
> benefits. The point is that foreign language instruction in schools doesn’t
> teach a second language.

Here he seems to be making the argument that it just doesn't work rather than
that it's not worth it. At the same time, Bryan Caplan whom he quotes and
seemingly endorses, is arguing that it's not really worth it.

Not quite sure what to make of this other than that both points strike me as
equally ridiculous.

Foreign languages absolutely /are/ worth it, even if one is lucky enough to be
born in an English-speaking country, and saying that second language education
should be dropped because it doesn't work is absurd.

Language education certainly needs to be improved all over the world. There is
enough research and anecdotal evidence that clearly shows that the standard
language education with a focus on learning grammar and doing 'fill in the
missing word' exercises from day one is largely a waste of time as opposed to
a focus on listening comprehension and learning whole phrases and sentences in
context and with relevant material one has a genuine interest in.

For example I find there's a strong correlation between English movies being
subtitled (Netherlands, Nordic countries), as opposed to dubbed (Spain,
France), and general English levels in the population.

As for the 'hardly any jobs use foreign languages' argument - that really is
quite disturbing, but in a way also very honest at the same time. The goal of
school isn't to help children develop into self-determined fully-formed adults
but rather to produce economically useful human resources.

Learning different languages enables one to view and conceptualise the world
differently. There's a strong indication that being multi-lingual reduces the
risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. A second language opens up a whole new
world, culture, literature in a way that consuming translated material simply
cannot provide.

Last but not least, it seems to me that there's a frighteningly large number
of Americans whose worldview is more or less that North America is the cradle
of civilisation, Europe is this quaint little village where you can go on
holiday and the rest of the world is basically a shithole, to paraphrase our
beloved leader of the free world.

In my opinion being exposed to a different culture/world from an early age
through an improved language curriculum focusing on immersion in real world
material can absolutely have a positive effect on this and in that context
also help improve the current political discourse, which, to butcher a quote
from John Oliver, mostly boils down to "two people who don't know what they're
talking about, being condescending to each other until one of them eventually
manages to land a sick burn". Who knows, if more people had a better idea of
what the world actually looks like outside of their own borders, it might even
become a little harder for the US to keep spreading all that democracy around
it.

Sorry about the rant, this sort of thing really gets me going.

