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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 oc

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?

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
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.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  Many foreigners manage to learn English and other languages quite nicely in their schools, thankyou very much. What Tabarrok says is that foreign languages are a waste of time, not that they are taught badly.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    No, he literally says: > 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. I get your point that other countries manage to teach English. But English has a large amount of utility to non-English speakers. The reverse isn't true for most languages English speakers could learn. I'm decidedly not anti-foreign languages. I can understand some Norwegian and French and am learning Arabic, but it is much less useful for me to know these languages than for a speaker of them to know English.
- munk-a 8y ago
  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.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    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.
mixedCase 8y ago
> It's puzzling that the idea of school exposing the children to culture This is a very bad argument for selecting school curricula, since you could use it for an overwhelmingly massive amount of subjects.
ghaff 8y ago
The problem is that four years of high school French (or whatever) doesn't teach the language to any appreciable degree. ("The point is that foreign language instruction in schools doesn’t teach a second language.") Now, I suppose you could double down on immersive language training etc. But, unlike the case of English in the Nordics for example, there's no single language that lots of US children would be greatly advantaged by learning. In my case, I took 4 years of HS French (and 2 of Latin), My French is better than nothing compared to someone who has never had any, but it sure isn't anything approaching fluent. In other words, 4 years of language is a pretty big block of HS time for a subject that seems to be pretty ineffective.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

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.

HarryHirsch 8y ago
Many foreigners manage to learn English and other languages quite nicely in their schools, thankyou very much. What Tabarrok says is that foreign languages are a waste of time, not that they are taught badly.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  No, he literally says: > 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. I get your point that other countries manage to teach English. But English has a large amount of utility to non-English speakers. The reverse isn't true for most languages English speakers could learn. I'm decidedly not anti-foreign languages. I can understand some Norwegian and French and am learning Arabic, but it is much less useful for me to know these languages than for a speaker of them to know English.
munk-a 8y ago
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.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  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.

mixedCase 8y ago

> It's puzzling that the idea of school exposing the children to culture This is a very bad argument for selecting school curricula, since you could use it for an overwhelmingly massive amount of subjects.

ghaff 8y ago

The problem is that four years of high school French (or whatever) doesn't teach the language to any appreciable degree. ("The point is that foreign language instruction in schools doesn’t teach a second language.") Now, I suppose you could double down on immersive language training etc. But, unlike the case of English in the Nordics for example, there's no single language that lots of US children would be greatly advantaged by learning. In my case, I took 4 years of HS French (and 2 of Latin), My French is better than nothing compared to someone who has never had any, but it sure isn't anything approaching fluent. In other words, 4 years of language is a pretty big block of HS time for a subject that seems to be pretty ineffective.