[Tdol's Blog] Compulsory foreign languages

[Tdol]

Compulsory foreign languages



Two years ago, the British government dropped compulsory foreign language lessons for GCSE students, an act of philistinism that should have resulted in the dismissal of the minister for even considering it. In a globalised society and as a member...

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[mykwyner]

Sadly, the monoglot is not the illiterate of today. There are plenty of plain old illiterate-in-their-native-language illiterates keeping me busy around the clock here in the US.

I am an advocate of the pedagogical theory that says we should teach less, but teach it more thoroughly. Some people call this "dumbing down" the curriculum; I call it "smarting up" the school system. Mandatory classes should only teach the things that are mandatory for a citizen in your society. This not only ensures that all students are literate and numerate, it allows "advanced" students to take challenging classes that are not slowed down by students who are forced to be there.

[Tdol]

I can see your point, but in the UK, there has been a crash in sciences, languages, etc, and we are in real danger of not having the resources we need for the future, as well as handing the elite who are privately educated a greater advatange than already exists. Since 1997, there has been a considerable expansion of tertiary education access, though with severe funding crises and a brain drain, and the result of this has been a skills shortage.

[BobK]

Just seen this: Languages to be made de rigueur in schools again - Britain - Times Online

I think the 1997 decision was incredibly short-sighted. I was reading somewhere the other day that within 20 years [I'm not sure of the figure - maybe a lot less] English would be overtaken as the predominant language used on the www (by Chinese). England could afford to be insular about learning languages once (when the sun never set on the British Empire). But in the 21st century it's madness.

b

[Tdol]

An interesting figure. It's logical given the numbers of Chinese sepakers and growing access to the internet, and the proportion of English pages has been going down for a while after the initial flurry dominated by America. I think that we are building long-term problems for the country by our complacent insularity.

[Red5]

In my view, the World Wide Web will surely reflect the diversity of the connected world, eventually. A world in which connectivity is growing ever faster, and where the languages 'spoken' on the Internet will reflect those of it's users far more than it does today.