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  1. #61
    Titan vindicatorx's Avatar
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    I thought this was already a thing? I grew up in podunk Indiana and we had to have 3 years of a foreign language from Spanish, German, French or, for some unknown reason, Latin.

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by CastletonSnob View Post
    Here's my hot take of the day: Students should be required to take foreign language classes in school to graduate. Knowing how to speak more than one language is a great skill that will make you more attractive to future employers. Studies show that foreign languages help critical thinking skills.
    They are in most countries. Are you gonna demand that PE should be part of the curriculum, too? Or Maths?
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  3. #63
    They were required at my high school in Tennesee.

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by Stelio Kontos View Post
    No thanks, I enjoy being multilingual and languages often carry the character of the cultures that use it. That would be lost if we all spoke one language. Besides, English isn't, in my view, a very pleasant language to become the *only* language. I can understand it being the lingua franca of this age, like Spanish, Arabic, Latin, and Greek before it. But my language is so much more precise and expressive than English is.
    It doesn't really matter what one wins out it's just very unlikely to be something other then mondrian or English.

    I don't agree that language alone carries any cultural relevance but I get that people will disagree.

  5. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by Krakan View Post
    It doesn't really matter what one wins out it's just very unlikely to be something other then mondrian or English.

    I don't agree that language alone carries any cultural relevance but I get that people will disagree.
    What you "agree" on and what is empirically provable and true aren't the same.

    Look at German Hymnal music and Italian Opera. One is based on syllables the other on vowels. Why do you guess that is?
    And that affects everything about the music cultures that to some degree have created modern music as it exists today.

    But different languages will create different types of music to put it to song with. A thing that'd be lost without different languages.
    Same as different languages expresses the same concepts in different ways. Which changes how you view something.
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  6. #66
    Quote Originally Posted by vindicatorx View Post
    I thought this was already a thing? I grew up in podunk Indiana and we had to have 3 years of a foreign language from Spanish, German, French or, for some unknown reason, Latin.
    I thought latin was the most interesting language to learn by far. Largely because it came hand in hand as a history class as well.

    7 years of french
    3 years of spanish
    4 years of latin
    1 year of german

    Time better spent elsewhere imo. They way schools teach langugages is a waste of time. It is like learning math and accepting less that 1% of your students are going to be able to identify the function of a plus sign, but at leas they can say it out loud, right? AFAIK it is already mandatory in most of europe to learn a second language. There always seems to be an agenda behind it as well. In NZ they are basically using necromancy to keep maori relevant. You want to talk something even more useless than Latin? Meet Maori.
    The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

  7. #67
    Latin is a dead language right? I was told you can’t pronounce it! Is that true?

  8. #68
    Herald of the Titans Tuor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cloe View Post
    Latin is a dead language right? I was told you can’t pronounce it! Is that true?
    Latin it's still the official language of the Vatican, you can pronouce it has much has you can actually speak it, but no one speaks it nativelly these days.

  9. #69
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    As long as they provide some language options. "Language" isn't like math where there's only one form of it. My schools only ever offered Spanish, which I was wholly uninterested in.
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  10. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by Muzjhath View Post
    What you "agree" on and what is empirically provable and true aren't the same.

    Look at German Hymnal music and Italian Opera. One is based on syllables the other on vowels. Why do you guess that is?
    And that affects everything about the music cultures that to some degree have created modern music as it exists today.

    But different languages will create different types of music to put it to song with. A thing that'd be lost without different languages.
    Same as different languages expresses the same concepts in different ways. Which changes how you view something.
    Yet we have many western branches of music that do not use language at all but rather incorporate sounds like chants for example.

    Still I feel like we are straying from my point. I don't think this should be a mandatory subject in education. I don't propose wiping out languages maliciously I just don't see the need of burdening students with a subject that is unlikely to be of any use to them.

    I would be in favor of cutting down general education to the eighth grade level and then having it focus on specialized vocational training as well so I admit my own opinion on the subject is radical.

  11. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by Krakan View Post
    Yet we have many western branches of music that do not use language at all but rather incorporate sounds like chants for example.

    Still I feel like we are straying from my point. I don't think this should be a mandatory subject in education. I don't propose wiping out languages maliciously I just don't see the need of burdening students with a subject that is unlikely to be of any use to them.

    I would be in favor of cutting down general education to the eighth grade level and then having it focus on specialized vocational training as well so I admit my own opinion on the subject is radical.
    Except, that chants are language. And depending on how the language is structured chants will work differently.

    And as for specialized vocational training. Someone who gets taught a second language early (before high school, preferably starting by grade 3/4) will be a better problem solver and better at whatever vocational training they get.
    - Lars

  12. #72
    Quote Originally Posted by Muzjhath View Post
    Except, that chants are language. And depending on how the language is structured chants will work differently.

    And as for specialized vocational training. Someone who gets taught a second language early (before high school, preferably starting by grade 3/4) will be a better problem solver and better at whatever vocational training they get.
    Right but I don't know if that is enough to justify the time spent...

    People seem to be coming at this from a individuals perspective rather then a group one.

  13. #73
    Sure, I totally agree, knowing many languages is a very cool skill. And children from bilingual families have a very significant advantage comparing to their coevals. Also knowing many languages makes the brain more flexible.

  14. #74
    In most schools, they are. Problem is, most of those people won't ever use it outside of the classroom and therefore won't ever really learn it.

  15. #75
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    Why should I be required to learn a language I will never speak? If I wanted to live in a country where English was not the main language? Sure, I would say it should be required but if I'm going to be living in the US all my life where 99% of the people here speak English why should I be required to learn how to speak Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian? Would I like to someday? Sure I'd love to learn how to speak Spanish, German, and Japanese or at least some words and sentences but I'll do that on my own time.

    Students need to be taught about more important things like how taxes work, how to drive a car and the rules of the road, and whatever other subject they need to learn about for whatever job they want to get. If foreign languages is one of those subjects THEN it can be something required of them.
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  16. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by Grubenwolf View Post
    Why should I be required to learn a language I will never speak? If I wanted to live in a country where English was not the main language? Sure, I would say it should be required but if I'm going to be living in the US all my life where 99% of the people here speak English why should I be required to learn how to speak Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian? Would I like to someday? Sure I'd love to learn how to speak Spanish, German, and Japanese or at least some words and sentences but I'll do that on my own time.

    Students need to be taught about more important things like how taxes work, how to drive a car and the rules of the road, and whatever other subject they need to learn about for whatever job they want to get. If foreign languages is one of those subjects THEN it can be something required of them.
    It's part of trying to teach critical thinking skills. Kids are more than just worker drones to program for corporate life.

    Being bilingual or multilingual has positive effects on a person's outlook and has cognitive benefits.

  17. #77
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stelio Kontos View Post
    It's part of trying to teach critical thinking skills. Kids are more than just worker drones to program for corporate life.

    Being bilingual or multilingual has positive effects on a person's outlook and has cognitive benefits.
    And there's nothing else that we could teach them that would have the same benefits?
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  18. #78
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grubenwolf View Post
    And there's nothing else that we could teach them that would have the same benefits?
    So...again, what exactly is wrong with second languages for this purpose? Besides you not liking them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Grubenwolf View Post
    Why should I be required to learn a language I will never speak? If I wanted to live in a country where English was not the main language? Sure, I would say it should be required but if I'm going to be living in the US all my life where 99% of the people here speak English
    Also, lol.

    Nearly 13% of the country speaks Spanish at home. Why shouldn't you learn the language of the people that were living there before you?
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  19. #79
    Quote Originally Posted by Monster Hunter View Post
    Is Spanish even offered?

    My high school had French and German with optional latin.

    Don't know of any school that offered Spanish, its a bit useless compared to French or German here.
    My school did it alternating between French and Spanish (and of course you had to learn Welsh ^^ ), one year learns French, next yeargroup learns Spanish then French for the following year group and so on. Might only be the Catholic schools around here that do it as I know the non-Catholic ones mostly seem to do German.

  20. #80
    The Insane Underverse's Avatar
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    I've never used any of the three foreign languages I learned, nor do I put them on my resume because my field doesn't care.

    When I'm hiring people, foreign languages make zero difference to me in a candidate's value.

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