“My Language is Bigger than Yours.”
The most influential language used on Earth today is English. Although English (according to several polls and studies)is second to Mandarin Chinese in the amount of its native speakers worldwide, English is taught as a secondary language in schools across the globe. One reason for this is that English is the primary language of many of the planet’s most economically powerful countries (U.S.A., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
“Well I can speak Pig-Latin.”
With so many people around the world learning English, it makes it relatively easy for Americans to find others to communicate with outside of their country. Although those who have grown up speaking English as a first language have the enormous advantage of strong fluency, more often than not, the popularity of English dissuades Americans from learning another language. The common attitude in America is that knowing a foreign language would be fun, but it’s not a necessary tool needed to get by in today’s world. This attitude puts our country at a huge disadvantage to the rapidly increasing bilingual populations of other counties.
“We aint got no education.”
The common norm in U.S. school systems is that a student can choose to take a foreign language (Most commonly Spanish or French) in high school as an elective. Sometimes this is available in middle school, and rarely in elementary. Very few public schools across the nation require that their students learn a foreign language. This policy dramatically contrasts that of many other countries’ school systems that require their students to begin learning a second language at early ages in primary school.
“Ok, Class. Settle down now, and turn your Klingon books to page 51.”
If I were Emperor of the United States I would require that schools begin teaching foreign languages in the first grade. At that young age, children are still developing their basic language skills. They are far more receptive to learning new words and phrases than their adolescent counterparts who’s raging hormones occupy all thinking with other things. I envision our country as a place inhabited by citizens that can freely talk in rapid indecipherable verses to each other whenever they want to say something bad about the person that’s standing next to them. I envision a day when the average American man has the tools necessary to suavely hit on non-English speaking foreign women with high rates of success. If our county’s school system doesn’t keep up with the ones overseas, we might one day wake up to find that our children can’t get as hot of women as some bilingual Frenchmen. That’s a world that I, for one, don’t want to live in.
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