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<span><h1 class="gmail-fs-headline gmail-speakable-headline">Should Schools Require Foreign Languages? Doubtful.</h1>
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Art Carden
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<div><p class="gmail-p1">Some schools allow students to
substitute classes in statistics, math, and computer programming courses
for “foreign language” requirements. It’s a good policy, and it would
be wise, I think, for schools around the country to adopt it or simply
drop foreign language requirements altogether.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">Don’t get me wrong: languages are great, and I think our
lives would be improved considerably if we all knew at least one
additional language and could read classics like <i>Les Miserables</i>, <i>War and Peace</i>, and <i>Don Quixote</i> in their original languages.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">But alas, as the economist and education iconoclast <a href="http://bcaplan.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bryan Caplan</a>
has pointed out, Americans rarely read the classics even in
translation. According to the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of
American adults “<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form</a>.”</p>
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<p class="gmail-p1">The problem isn’t that people don’t read the classics in
their original language or even that they don’t read the classics. It’s
that they don’t read, <i>period</i>. There are undoubtedly lives that
have been changed as people went from being uninterested in the life of
the mind to enthusiastic readers after studying Russian and reading <i>The Brothers Karamzov</i>, but these are surely very few and very far between.</p>
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<p class="gmail-p1">For the average American, studying foreign languages in
school is a waste of time given all the other things she could be doing.
For the marginal American who would be nudged into a Spanish class
rather than art history or economics by just a little bit more subsidy,
there is hardly anything to be gained by making that choice.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">“But it’s good for society.” I’m not so sure. For society
writ large, it’s hard to see how we’re all made better off by just a bit
more language study at the expense of other things people could be
doing. In other words, I don’t think there are unrealized spillover
benefits waiting to be picked up by nudging people into an extra
semester or extra year of Spanish at the expense of the other things
they could be doing.</p>
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<p class="gmail-p1">Don’t get me wrong: my life would undoubtedly be much
better if I knew more than the smattering of German I remember from High
School. Then again, my life would also be better if I played piano,
raced triathlons, or mastered the art of French cooking. Even equipped
with this knowledge, I chose—and choose—to do other things.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">According to Thomas Sowell, “the first lesson of economics
is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all
those who want it.” In other words, you can’t have it all. By choosing
to do one thing, you’re choosing <i>not</i> to do another, and
additional language study would have to come at the expense of something
else—something else that people, facing the incentives and constraints
they currently face, have deemed more important than a little more
language learning.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">“But most Europeans are multilingual.” That’s true, but
Europe has a lot of language groups clustered in a relatively small
space. Paris is closer to Amsterdam than Birmingham is to New Orleans,
and you don’t change languages between Birmingham and New Orleans.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">Here’s some additional perspective. This summer, my family
is taking a cross-country road trip. On our first day of driving, I
believe we’re driving from Birmingham to Columbia, Missouri. According
to Google Maps it’ll be about a 9-hour drive through parts of Alabama,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. It’s roughly the same
driving time as the trip from Hamburg, Germany to Paris, but on a drive
from Hamburg to Paris you would pass through four countries (Germany,
Holland, Belgium, France) speaking three different languages (German,
Dutch, and French).</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">The average European isn’t that far from a place where
people speak another language. Hence, it’s to their advantage to learn
multiple languages. A student in Birmingham would have to travel about a
thousand miles to get to the Mexican border, where she wouldn’t be
surrounded by native English speakers. And even then, she would be
surrounded by enough people who speak English that she’d be able to get
around without a whole lot of trouble. Even then, the distance from San
Antonio to McAllen, Texas is comparable to the distance between Berlin
and Prague.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">Compared to all the other things she could be doing,
studying a foreign language doesn’t give her a lot of bang for her buck.
“The world would be a better place if all Americans knew a foreign
language” is true, but it’s not the same thing as “it is therefore a
good use of resources to require students to study foreign languages in
school.” The second claim needs a solid argument for what we would give
up and why.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">But back to Sowell: “The first lesson of politics is to
disregard the first lesson of economics.” If you pretend that scarcity
isn’t a constraint, it’s easy to imagine having more of something you
think important just by wishing for it. Or voting for it. Policies that
disregard scarcity are unlikely to be wise.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">One might respond that there are <i>benefits</i> to
language study even if someone doesn’t obtain fluency. They’re right,
but there are also costs— and most Americans have voted with their time
and money for lots of things besides studying foreign languages. By what
right, I wonder, do We Enlightened Few presume to tell them what to do?
Even with the resources we’re spending on language instruction now,
people aren’t really learning much, and “we should <i>make </i>them!”
doesn’t strike me as a response to “people don’t value this particular
course of study” that’s worthy of a free society that respects human
dignity and the right to choose.</p>
<p class="gmail-p1">Would the world be a better place if Americans knew more
languages? It absolutely would be, but the world would be a better place
with more of a lot of things (great music, great artwork) and less of a
lot of other things (obesity, poverty). Bryan Caplan argues that people
don’t retain a lot of what they study, and foreign languages are one of
his main examples. In light of what we actually know about what people
learn, retain, and use, the sad fact is that eliminating language
requirements would almost certainly be a very good policy move.</p></div>
<span><div><p>Art Carden teaches economics at Samford University's Brock School of Business.</p></div></span>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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