Liberal Talk Radio

Although I think it’s absurd to choose your child’s second language courses based on GDP, I sort of agree withthe idea that, in the 21st Century, it’s silly for schools to continue to offer Spanish, French, and Latin in their language departments.

Back in my hometown, we had the glorious options of Spanish and Italian. And about half the kids in my high school probably spoke one of those two languages at home, so they weren’t really being exposed to anything new. They mostly picked their native tongue to get an easy “A.” (of course, it was never that easy, because their regional dialects meant they often horribly mis-spelled and mispronounced words).

But seriously, teaching latin in high school is like, well… teaching Creationism. It doesn’t fly anymore.

Of course, there’s an argument that one should learn language for more than just economic reasons. There’s cultural value to language study. For me, this makes it even more important to stop teaching the “dead white guy” Euro-centric languages of French, Spanish, and Italian. Let’s subvert the dominant hierarcy! Bring on Hindi, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic!