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Aurgh! Your comment is on one hand something I really want to respond to, yet on the other hand difficult for me to respond to well. > At a higher education le

Aurgh! Your comment is on one hand something I really want to respond to, yet on the other hand difficult for me to respond to well. > At a higher education level (say College on up) I would be strongly inclined to agree with you. Give the students freedom and they will make the right choices for themselves, and they will be the only ones to live with it if they don't. > At the basic education level (high school and below), this is precisely when society is teaching its children what it needs to continue its culture. Background: I am in high school. Anyway, I've come up against this barrier so much and it drives me crazy. Here, like in most American high schools, society isn't teaching us anything. It's teaching us to hate the 'mandatory' subjects, because everyone has to take them, and thus the teachers can't teach it well because 3/4 of their classes are utterly uninterested. To be honest, I despise my world history class. And it's not because it's history - I'm fine with history, in face, I enjoy learning about it. It's because it's mandatory, which means everyone takes it, so in the end, everyone suffers. With the AP level course system that exists in the USA, you're taking college-level courses in high school. Why should high school students have to suffer any more than college students? > Most students at this age do not have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about what they should learn, and moreover society has a vested interest in ensuring that its young people meet certain minimums. This is even harder to argue with, because of the "most". I guess it's that old argument: would you rather allow the more gifted to excel, or everyone be held at the same level (with that level being slightly higher than had you went with the other option)? And, honestly, it isn't 'society' - society isn't doing anything. It's the school system, a bureaucratized administration incapable of seeing the system from the students perspective and incapable of creating a true institution of learning in which the students who want to learn at a decent rate can. Ugh, sorry for this rant. It's just been bothering me for the past two years, because high school is so goddamn constrained and mandatory it's angering. Instead of learning, I have to sit through things I already know and listen to incompetent teachers talk about irrelevant topics. I guess I should add something related to the original topic. I speak two languages fluently, and learned Spanish in high school for four years, then promptly dropped it. Why? Because even though I live in an area with easily 30% Spanish-speakers, I don't ever need to use it. Ever! And if I try to practice it, the Spanish-speakers would just rather speak English, because a lot of them are more comfortable talking to me in English. My point: in almost all places in the USA, other languages are useless. Now, in my own time, outside of school, I've learned some Portuguese, because I play capoeira and my instructor and students learning it along with me speak it all the time. My second point: when you need to, you will learn a language.

timwiseman 17y ago
You make a lot of interesting points. It's teaching us to hate the 'mandatory' subjects, because everyone has to take them, and thus the teachers can't teach it well because 3/4 of their classes are utterly uninterested. I ran into this as well. I was fortunate in having a high school with a high percentage of AP classes and those were much closer to collage classes than high school classes. But remember in college they have mandatory courses too. If a course in high school is mandatory it means that someone has decided it is beneficial for most of society to understand that subject and I disagree with some of the details, but there is obvious benefit to having an educated society. One way to at least help alleviate what you are describing is to offer more classes, more AP style classes, develop cooperatives with local community colleges so some students can take classes there instead of at the high school, and to let people test out of classes if they have already mastered the subject. This is even harder to argue with, because of the "most". I guess it's that old argument: would you rather allow the more gifted to excel, or everyone be held at the same level (with that level being slightly higher than had you went with the other option)? You can allow the gifted(loaded term, but that is a different topic) to excel while ensuring everyone has every opportunity and incentive to meet the minimums. They are not mutually exclusive. The sticking point of course is that to do that we would need a lot more resources in the education system than we have now, but I think that as a society we should spend a lot more on education. My point: in almost all places in the USA, other languages are useless. I think that is going to far, but I would agree with in the US another language is of limited value. And for an English speaker, you will find a relatively high percentage of people in most other countries speak at least some English. But, as the original article pointed out, learning a second language helps develop your mind. It can also give you better perspective on another culture. It is the ancillary benefits that are highly valuable rather than the skill itself for most English speakers.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  >But, as the original article pointed out, learning a second language helps develop your mind. It can also give you better perspective on another culture. I never did Latin at school (my wife did, but I think I know more Latin vocab now than her!) but this can be a good argument for Latin or Greek - except instead of learning about a modern culture you're learning about a relatively ancient one; but crucially (at least in Europe) one that is still having a big impact (particularly Roman/Latin).

timwiseman 17y ago

You make a lot of interesting points. It's teaching us to hate the 'mandatory' subjects, because everyone has to take them, and thus the teachers can't teach it well because 3/4 of their classes are utterly uninterested. I ran into this as well. I was fortunate in having a high school with a high percentage of AP classes and those were much closer to collage classes than high school classes. But remember in college they have mandatory courses too. If a course in high school is mandatory it means that someone has decided it is beneficial for most of society to understand that subject and I disagree with some of the details, but there is obvious benefit to having an educated society. One way to at least help alleviate what you are describing is to offer more classes, more AP style classes, develop cooperatives with local community colleges so some students can take classes there instead of at the high school, and to let people test out of classes if they have already mastered the subject. This is even harder to argue with, because of the "most". I guess it's that old argument: would you rather allow the more gifted to excel, or everyone be held at the same level (with that level being slightly higher than had you went with the other option)? You can allow the gifted(loaded term, but that is a different topic) to excel while ensuring everyone has every opportunity and incentive to meet the minimums. They are not mutually exclusive. The sticking point of course is that to do that we would need a lot more resources in the education system than we have now, but I think that as a society we should spend a lot more on education. My point: in almost all places in the USA, other languages are useless. I think that is going to far, but I would agree with in the US another language is of limited value. And for an English speaker, you will find a relatively high percentage of people in most other countries speak at least some English. But, as the original article pointed out, learning a second language helps develop your mind. It can also give you better perspective on another culture. It is the ancillary benefits that are highly valuable rather than the skill itself for most English speakers.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago
>But, as the original article pointed out, learning a second language helps develop your mind. It can also give you better perspective on another culture. I never did Latin at school (my wife did, but I think I know more Latin vocab now than her!) but this can be a good argument for Latin or Greek - except instead of learning about a modern culture you're learning about a relatively ancient one; but crucially (at least in Europe) one that is still having a big impact (particularly Roman/Latin).