But I must also say that I learned later to appreciate for example Latin. So precise and mathematical.

Mathematics, history, biology, anthropolosy, physics, chemistry--all also require a different way of thinking, and I think would be more likely to be of some use and interest then picking a random language that it's unlikely any particular student will ever use for anything of note.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with learning another language, just that money and time resources are limited and might be better used on something else. Something else that also provides a new way to look at the world.

Of course, if an individual knows he or she will have need for a particular language, it's great to learn it.

RufusTFirefly wrote: "Mathematics, history, biology, anthropolosy, physics, chemistry--all also require a different way of thinking"

History and anthropology in a different way from the "hard sciences". A proper study of these, or many other social sciences, is greatly enriched by acquiring something of the worldview rooted in a different language. Not to mention the usefulness of an ability to understand source materials in other languages.

British Sign Language (BSL) and enough French to order a meal.

The BSL is surprisingly useful except when communicating with an ASL user. Damn the speed of one handed alphabets.

>>>Mathematics, history, biology, anthropolosy, physics, chemistry--all also require a different way of thinking,<<<

Only math comes close to what I mean.

Elina wrote: "Only math comes close to what I mean."

I take it that you are not into quantum physics.

That's all well and good, P, but which language do we start to teach budding historians and anthropologists? And how do we determine which 6-year olds are those budding historians and anthropologists who would find some unidentified language of the hundreds in use around the world helpful in their careers 20 years down the road?

I speak Aramaic. It's not very useful when I travel in Germany.

RufusTFirefly wrote: "That's all well and good, P, but which language do we start to teach budding historians and anthropologists? "

I think we might start with a language for which we can find teachers and teaching resources. That narrows it down a bit.

"And how do we determine which 6-year olds are those budding historians and anthropologists who would find some unidentified language of the hundreds in use around the world helpful in their careers 20 years down the road?"

Do we restrict mathematics education to prospective engineers, or music education to candidate concert pianists? Let the flowers bloom.

Just about everyone uses mathematics to some degree in their daily lives. But note that we don't teach trig and calculus to everyone as most people never need either, at least not to the degree that it's cost effective to teach it to all.

Most Americans and Canadians never have a use for a foreign language, at least not to the degree that it's worth the money and effort to teach it to a level that it might be useful someday for some small percentage of the population.

Mass language training is a warm and fuzzy, sounds good, feels good, cumbaya sort of thing. But not very practical in countries like the USA where the vast majority of the population will never have a use for it--or where, if an individual ever does have a use for it, they will probably need Japanese after taking years of French in school; or vice-versa.

If we had unlimited time and funds--great. But the fact is we don't have enough to teach the basics in English, math, the sciences, history, etc., let alone something that might or might not be useful to some subset of individuals someday. Maybe.

I think a good education shouldn't be practical. A good education should expose you to all the corners of the world and stretch all the corners of your mind.

That's why I think students should study languages, and calculus and anthropology, and all the other things that might not find practical application later in life.

A good education is about the joy of learning for learning's sake alone.

gruezi

DH and I speak English, French, (he well, me-just enough to order food) and 'transactional' Italian...that is enough to get by, but not enough to 'get' the humour of a conversation.

Our daughter and SIL between them speak English, Italian, Spanish and French, all fluently, and are learning Dutch. They can go anywhere in life.

Language skills are incredibly useful and each generation adds another layer of expertise. Children taught a second language young have the tracks laid down to layer other languages on top.

And both daughter and I can count, too. Don't see these as competing skill-sets.

RufusTFirefly, you seem to be stuck on a view that the only reason for learning a language is direct utility. On a similar basis, one can reject the study of history because we cannot live in the past, other than in a figurative sense. If you limit education to things that are likely to be directly useful to a majority, school programmes would be very limited, and I would not be optimistic about the outcomes of schooling.

I studied trigonometry and calculus in secondary school, in addition to four languages and many other things. There seemed to be enough time. I thought the time difference between here and the USA was merely a shift, not a re-scaling.

The things I learned in public school that are most useful in my current life almost forty years after graduation are:

1. playing the flute
2. speaking and reading French

You never know what is going to be useful.

I wholeheartedly agree, however, that utility should not be the sole basis of education.

This thread consists largely of people discussing the languages they know, many of which were learned in public school. I am sure these folks all are happy they had that opportunity.

I am glad that I finished my education and my children finished theirs before schools became a place where nothing is taught but the three R's, although I watch sadly as American education heads in that misguided direction.

<i>This thread consists largely of people discussing the languages they know, many of which were learned in public school. I am sure these folks all are happy they had that opportunity.</i>

I studied Spanish in a public school (and in university) and consider it the biggest waste of my entire educational experience. Seemed like a good idea at the time and better than the alternative (French), but it is not a language I have much use for, either personally or professionally. I've forgotten almost everything I learned from lack of use.

And that is one of the problems with public school language instruction. It is overly concentrated in a few languages. Most schools in the US offer Spanish, often French, maybe German. Most Asian languages are hard to find, as would be Arabic or Russian.

And, even if we could reasonably offer a multitude of languages, how many kids are going to make a beneficial, long-term decision as to which language they study? Even if I had been offered Mandarin, I might have still chosen Spanish, and still be in the same position I am now.

As for all the talk of education not being practical... that is all good and well, but I don't think it does much to help the case for universal foreign language instruction. Math teaches one how to think logically. Science helps one understand concepts of causality and proof. History, taught properly, teaches one how to think critically. The case that studying these is more crucial to being a well-rounded person is pretty compelling.

Foreign language study is all about skills. It isn't about thinking. Sure, maybe once you get to literature study, you start to think, but is it in any sort of way different than when you study English literature? Not in my experience.

travelgourmet wrote: &quot;Foreign language study is all about skills. It isn't about thinking.&quot;

You can make similar assertions about other subjects the way they are typically taught in schools.

Language is a vehicle for thought; different languages involve different modes of thought; acquiring additional languages opens a pathway to different ways of dealing with the world. The learner might not go down the path -- but there are plenty of people who have not gone on the paths opened for them by mathematics classes or science classes or history classes, and there does not seem to be the same will to dismiss those subjects as not being worthwhile.

You know the canards (nice French word, that) that crop up here about French arrogance, and their being rude if you don't speak French? There is a greater arrogance in putting forward a view that the acquisition of foreign languages is simply not worth while for Americans.

I can't discuss philosophy in any language.

I'm glad I started with Spanish and stuck with it the longest, because I'm most likely to use it in my daily life. I select it when using the supermarket self checkout, because the voice saying &quot;Por favor, tome sus articulos&quot; sounds more musical and less bossy than the English version. In stressful foreign language situations, the Spanish word is most likely to spring to mind.

I'm pretty good with French, can get around in German, and I know some Opera Italian. Occasions to say, &quot;Pace, pace mio dolce tesoro&quot; don't come often enough, though.

<i>different languages involve different modes of thought</i>

Care to support this? Because, from here this seems like a pretty thin argument. That is if it is even an argument at all, rather than a vague, meaningless cliche.

In what way do &quot;modes of thought&quot; differ across languages? How do they differ between speaking French and English, for example? What about more closely-related languages, such as French and Spanish? Do accents and dialects involve different modes of thought? Do such modes differ more across language (French to English) than within language (UK to US)? How do we explain that religions do not seem to suffer from language barriers? And even if we think we can explain such differences and assign causality to language, how would one disentangle history and religion and culture from the language? Is linguistics, therefore, a wasted field, as it seeks to explain language formation generally and scientifically, rather than resorting to &quot;the French speak French because they think differently than Japanese people&quot;?

If this is the case, how do we explain the persistent influence of philosophers and their ideas across culture? If the modes of thought are so different, one would expect philosophers to be unique to a particular culture and their ideas to be dismissed by others. Instead, the philosophies of the Greeks, for example, remain popular among peoples that speak languages far removed from Classical Greek.

<i>There is a greater arrogance in putting forward a view that the acquisition of foreign languages is simply not worth while for Americans.</i>

No. What is arrogant is trying to dismiss the opinions of others, not by discussing the merits of that opinion, but by trying to insult its proponents. I may be arrogant, but having a different opinion about the value of foreign language education is not, in and of itself, arrogant.

In my experience, assigning differences to language and even culture is often used to excuse a lack of a central idea. It is used to cover up for an inability to assign meaningful, provable causal mechanisms to events or actions. And it is, frankly, incongruous with a world-view that most people are largely similar. At its worst, it can be used just as easily to justify racism as multi-culturalism. It is a fine line between saying &quot;we must study Arabic because Arabic speakers think about the world in a fundamentally different way&quot; and saying &quot;The Arabic way of thinking about the world is incongruous with ours and our worlds will inevitably clash&quot;.

&quot;different languages involve different modes of thought&quot;

This happens when you become fluent. I take on a bit of another character when I'm speaking Swiss German with my fellow Swiss than when I'm speaking English.

travelgourmet wrote: &quot;Care to support this? Because, from here this seems like a pretty thin argument. That is if it is even an argument at all, rather than a vague, meaningless cliche.&quot;

We are dealing with what I regard as self-evident fact here, and I am not going to undertake a work of scholarship in a forum like this. But at a simple level, if you cannot name something, it is very difficult to hold an idea of it. The Irish language has no word for &quot;no&quot;: that shapes Irish social behaviour (even when we operate in English, because we use the English word less than other English-speakers). Dubya also understood the idea of needing a word to enable holding an idea when he pointed out that the French have no word for &quot;entrepreneur&quot;. I'm not going to expend effort in dealing with grammatical systems: it's even more important, but too much work.

On the arrogance issue: I was not setting out to insult anybody. It is an observable phenomenon that Americans tend not to learn other languages, and that some of them expect people in other countries to make the adjustment of speaking American; some are quite vocal about it. It contributes to a perception of Americans that is a cause of concern for those who are a bit less insensitive. Dismissing language acquisition as not being worth while is worryingly close to the &quot;Why don't they speak English&quot; school of thought (or is that school of thoughtlessness?).

Yes, I agree that people are largely similar the world over. One point of similarity is a tendency to exaggerate small differences between individuals and groups, and the chasm that has opened up between the Arab-Islamic world and the West is an important instance. Bridges are needed, and people who have a profound understanding of the different cultural milieux are the engineers.

That's enough work. I have more trivial things to engage with.