It is refreshing to see this kind of research promoted, particularly by an 'extremely learned person'. The submission reads to me as a sort of call to arms, as

It is refreshing to see this kind of research promoted, particularly by an 'extremely learned person'. The submission reads to me as a sort of call to arms, as someone who feels that education has been a great privilege and bonus to their life. A privilege which is now unfortunately being sold off to the highest bidder in most countries. From my own experience, learning second/third languages has had a noticeable broadening effect on thinking processes. Not in the proud sense of being 'broad minded', but noticeably better able to engage in abstract concepts. Basically the ability to compare seemingly unrelated notions felt tangibly improved after learning how my speech in English was actually constructed, and how my words and phrases were just $variables for actual concepts. And I'm quite convinced that given the right chances in life, anybody can learn any of a thousand subjects that would have a similar effect. The end benefit to society? Impossible to say for sure, but you can bet good money on the additional creativity being an improvement on the previous generation in terms of progress. This article, and others like it, are great to read but one aspect I would like to see further developed would be the effect of role models and the origin of aspiration in a person. Is it even possible to give more people the desire to want to learn more? Are some people just naturally more 'competitive'? What role does gender play? On a final note, Radio 4 this week interviewed a panel on women going into Physics, in particular. It was a ridiculously low amount, and one of the female panellists excused this with the reasoning that 'girls often prefer biological sciences'. These kind of assumptions, and a complete ignorance of any potential underlying social issues, are what get my goat. So many thanks, Colin, for submitting this.