3 years of French in HS, 2 more in college. I’ve used it multiple times in Quebec, France, and Switzerland. I wish I had more chance to practice my French.
Not that I’m accusing you of this, necessarily, but so often I encounter statements like this where the speaker is implying “Shame on them for wasting my time by making me learn something I’d never use,” when the implication could just as easily be “Shame on me for wasting my opportunity by never using something I learned.”
Shame on the educational institution for using expensive resources on something with little to no benefit for the vast majority of their students simply to fund a department that can’t attract enough students to take their classes as electives. There is enough evidence that this requirement isn’t necessary in the modern world because everyone speaks English to do business with. I’ve worked on major software projects for foreign countries and we had planned to have language subject matter experts to convert the interface to their native language, and the client put in the requirement they wanted it in all in English.
Spanish is a natural choice for bilingual signs in many parts of the US mainly because of immigration. With whatever political debates go with that or not, but where it’s the natural choice, immigration is usually the main reason, though tourism and general use of (though south more than central) FL as a business capital of Latin America is an additional reason there.
Otherwise in English speaking countries (without a long time non-English speaking region like Quebec) it’s kind of tough and can be arbitrary to choose one or even a few languages as the alternatives. Recently I was in the (very nice) Minneapolis airport and the signs were in English…and Japanese. I guess that’s some left over from ‘the Japanese are taking over the world’ mentality of the '80’s?
It could turn out similar IMO for the now ‘obvious’ choice (besides perhaps Spanish) of Chinese (in simplified PRC characters in written signs). Just because China is a huge country in people becoming now more commensurately huge economically does not mean the Chinese language (in one of its multivariate forms, written and spoken) is going to become a common international language. Re: stpauler’s comment I love studying Chinese characters personally, it’s fun for me besides the way it increases one’s ability in Korean and Japanese. But I don’t see learning Chinese as so obvious for English speakers in terms of strict ‘going to use it’, as in a job, for most people.
English speakers do have a ‘problem’, one IMO likely to persist in our lifetimes at least, that there’s is basically the international language.
Took four years of French. Back then, I thought that the requirement seemed stupid; but now, decades later, I’ve come to believe that it’s stupider than I’d thought.
I took five years of French from junior high through high school, because I wanted to learn another language. I did go to France when I was 17, so I was able to use what I had learned. I still read French, and over the past couple decades (thank you internet) often read French news sites.
Admittedly, my spoken French has never been great but I was able to communicate with people who had no other common language with me so mission accomplished.
I question the utility of making everyone take a foreign language without a direct connection/need of their profession. Most people, such as yourself, never use what they learn. I think language instruction should be readily available, but not necessarily mandated.
Currently, yes, English is the common tongue in the world. I have a German friend married to a Maltese guy, they speak in English together. That said, 70 years ago, French was the international auxiliary language. Back in the 80s/90s, fear of the Japanese tiger taking over the business world was enough to make Japanese a valuable language to learn should a person want to do global business. Would Mandarin or Russian be better to learn? Could be. Look at how poorly those languages are translated into English but also the possible rise of those countries and the decline of the native Anglophone population.
Well, if our students had spent all that time wasted on foreign-language requirements on scientific and technological studies, maybe we’d still be aces.
I like learning languages.
I studied Spanish in high school and continued with it at university. I am not quite fluent, but I can converse. I like Latin music and have some Latino acquaintences, so it’s useful.
It also helped when I studied French later in life.
Very small rural high school in the 70’s. Three years of Spanish were offered and I took them. I’ve used it quite a bit, both in Mexico and Texas. And once in Quebec when confronted with a very anti-English group in a public restroom.
One of the things we used were audio tapes. They would demonstrate the correct way to pronounce the words and we would parrot it back. They weren’t supposed to be funny, but we got a hoot out of them. I still remember one:
“Comos gritos, hijo! Que es en su bolsa? EEEK! Una calabra!”
I took 2 years of Spanish in high school. It came in handy on several trips to central and South America. Alas, it is not nearly enough to figure out what a “calabra” is, why the son had it in a bag and why it made people scream…
Two years of French. Even though I was never fluent and can hardly speak it (or understand it spoken) at all now, I retained enough that it was useful in reading things on some business trips to Europe. I’ve also used it to help translate material in a trading card game, among other minor leisure applications. I’d say that it also improved my facility with languages in general, and Romance languages in particular, but I would have benefited more if the classes had been available earlier.
This is all despite the fact that it was not a very good class, taught by someone who wasn’t qualified to teach it. (My high school was small and rural, and was unable to get a qualified teacher.)
I’ve always thought waiting until high school was silly. I still know more French than I do Spanish, because I went to a Montessori School for grade school, and one of the teachers was a Francophone and so taught French lessons.
And, even though I don’t remember most of the vocabulary I learned, I do think it changed my way of thinking about language, and made it easy for me to pick it back up with a few trips to a dictionary. Heck, I think it made learning Spanish easier.
I can learn grammar pretty well now, because I’ve been exposed to the idea of it being different, and actually working within a different grammatical system.
I also think it’s why I can so easily understand phonemes and such. I notice all these different ways people speak, even in English. All of it just makes sense to me. And, in foreign languages, I may not have the vocabulary, but I can pronounce the names very nearly correctly with a quick check, unlike people who just constantly say “I’m sorry if I butcher the pronunciation,” which always seems a cop out.
There’s a lot to learn with exposure to another language, but high school is too late to be starting this.
Couple weeks of French in middle school (see below), 3 years in high school, 3 or 4 in college. 1 year of Japanese in college, and 1 informal year in high school. I’m amazed at how little my French has atrophied and I don’t do a lot to keep it up. I can’t speak it worth a damn, but then I was never good at that, but I can at least read and form sentences pretty well.
Two programming languages in high school that I don’t remember, if those count. And 2-3 more in grad school which I do use semi-regularly.
I managed to go through my entire K-12 schooling in California without taking a single Spanish class, which I think is some kind of world record. Including middle school where the electives class was a rotation through something like 14 different mandatory subjects for a few weeks each, but there was only enough time for 12 or so (trimester / 4), with different class cohorts starting in different classes, so that Spanish and another were on the chopping block.
Are we talking about “culebra” here, or is there a joke that’s flying over my head?
While I agree for most a foreign language in High School is not all that practical, what would we replace those courses with? “Working in Spreadsheets”? “Microsoft Suite”? “Writing code”? “Navigating Social Media”? “Accepting your fate as a soul-less, cubicle-dwelling corporate drone”?
How much of high school education is truly practical, anyway. ISTM that is the time for exposure to a wide range of things that can spark an interest in a variety of fields, and a place to learn how to learn. One could argue that Calculus and Art and Music are not all that practical, either, but a good foundation of a wide range of subjects rounds-out a person, and lets them find something to focus-on in college, which is where they should be starting to pick-up more practical skills for their chosen field (even if that it still a soul-less, cubicle-dwelling corporate drone).
Hell, I worked for years in a highly technical engineering job in Silicon Valley and the most sophisticated math I ever used was taking an average. We definitely need to strike a balance between what someone needs to know for their job and what someone needs to know to be an educated person. Especially with a foreign language, where the best time to teach is to kids under 12, who knows whether or not any kid at that age will “need” it?
To answer the other parts of the OP question:
per my countrys curricula, my first foreign language in 5th grade was English, until 13th grade (and an AP course)
my second language in 7th grade was the choice between French and Latin, on the (bad) advice from my father I choose Latin, and kept it till 11th grade (finishing officially with the big Latinum, a requirement for many subjects at University)
I went to an AP High school, math-natural science branch.
The people who go to an AP high school with classical or modern language will have a 3rd foreign language in 9th grade.
Even back in the 50s, at a classical branch AP high school*, where the first two were Greek and Latin, the third language was English.
Today, there’s a lot of pushing of teaching English in primary school, or even doing exercises - songs, rhymes, games - in Kindergarten.
I struggled with English, because I have a hard time learning things and remembering vocabulary; in my case time spent abroad helped me. But I never resented English for being bad at it, I liked reading english books.
I use it regularly on the internet, reading english stuff, and like watching DVDs in original soundtrack. (Listening to british accents is hard because most movies have AE accents, but with Brexit, I’m not going to visit GB in the near future).
Latin I hated because there was no alternative to rote learning, and I never got it, and sucked at it.
I’m currently learning French with Babbel in my spare time (little bit each day), because it’s useful to know foreign languages.
- AP High school because it finishes with an exam that qualifies to enter University, and is therefore oriented towards studying, instead of being practical oriented like the lesser, and shorter, High school types.
You can see the difference between what psychology and pedagogy knows about language learning if you look at paid courses like Babbel, who know customers will only keep paying if their courses are easy and fun enough to keep doing, yet good enough to teach. (Or duolingo, which is free, but also uses just vocabulary).
Here’s an essay When do people learn languages? about learning languages by some guy who knows about linguistics.
Sure, but the way I remember it, Music was an elective at my high school. Art, too. Calculus, too. And some folks took Metal Shop – and some didn’t, because, y’know, elective. And you could take Drama, or not; elective. And you could take Typing, or not. And you could take Cooking, or not. And so on.
Now, there were required classes along with the electives; you were going to take Biology and Chemistry and Physics, but IIRC you also had the option of taking, say, Psychology. And you were going to take “a foreign language,” because that was a requirement rather than a mere option like Art or Calculus.
Is it that important, compared to the subjects that are optional?