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I find it very similar to primary education language classes. Unless you use it as an adult after school, you’re not going to retain the knowledge for very long

I find it very similar to primary education language classes. Unless you use it as an adult after school, you’re not going to retain the knowledge for very long. And most people aren’t going to be using either set of skills in their adult lives after school. I took several years of Latin in both high school and college but outside of those academic environments I never had cause to use it and while I remember a lot of aspects of it structurally, my Latin vocabulary is almost all gone. I have at times pulled out my old textbooks just to try and see what I can do, and I can certainly work through that material a lot faster than the first time around, but I’m still needing to start at a rudimentary level to get anywhere.

ec109685 5y ago
Nice thing about language classes is that being bad at a language (or just not being interested) doesn't preclude many career paths. Math on the other hand is a clear gate, which doesn't make sense since you can literally forget and still do well in your career (as the parent poster mentioned).
- tkgally 5y ago
  > Nice thing about language classes is that being bad at a language (or just not being interested) doesn't preclude many career paths. It does outside the English-speaking world. In many non-English-speaking countries—including Japan, where I live—English education is similar to mathematics education: All children have to study it and ability at school English is treated as an indicator of overall academic ability, but many children struggle with it and by adulthood most people have forgotten most of what they learned. In Japan, school English education is also affected by problems similar to those mentioned in other comments on this page, including English teachers who themselves are not skilled at the language, educational policies that require that all children study the same material at the same age, and, sometimes, an overemphasis on rote memorization and teaching-to-the-test. There’s a huge industry in Japan serving adults who have forgotten most of their school English—or didn’t learn much in the first place—and who now want to get better at it in order to advance their careers.

ec109685 5y ago

Nice thing about language classes is that being bad at a language (or just not being interested) doesn't preclude many career paths. Math on the other hand is a clear gate, which doesn't make sense since you can literally forget and still do well in your career (as the parent poster mentioned).

tkgally 5y ago
> Nice thing about language classes is that being bad at a language (or just not being interested) doesn't preclude many career paths. It does outside the English-speaking world. In many non-English-speaking countries—including Japan, where I live—English education is similar to mathematics education: All children have to study it and ability at school English is treated as an indicator of overall academic ability, but many children struggle with it and by adulthood most people have forgotten most of what they learned. In Japan, school English education is also affected by problems similar to those mentioned in other comments on this page, including English teachers who themselves are not skilled at the language, educational policies that require that all children study the same material at the same age, and, sometimes, an overemphasis on rote memorization and teaching-to-the-test. There’s a huge industry in Japan serving adults who have forgotten most of their school English—or didn’t learn much in the first place—and who now want to get better at it in order to advance their careers.