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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.
by 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 agoMany 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 agoNo, 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 agoSo 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 agoWhat 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.