Schools should expand world language programs
Schools should focus on teaching languages that can be beneficial for students in the future.
November 30, 2021
Mandarin and Hindi are among the five most commonly spoken languages in the world, yet few U.S. high schools teach them.
Learning a new language is highly beneficial, but there are improvements that can be made to better the education.
High school language course options are often limited to only a few languages. Spanish, French, German, and Latin are the most common languages being taught in high schools across the country.
Mandarin and Hindi are scarcely taught in the United States, and yet are widely spoken.
Schools should focus on teaching languages that can be beneficial for students in the future.
But adding a new curriculum isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Mandarin and Hindi are scarcely taught in the United States, and yet are widely spoken.
The cost to hire new teachers would dig into school fundings. And finding teachers to hire, especially when it would be a high demand subject area, is currently difficult.
Although there are a few drawbacks, the outcome would be worth it.
Mandarin and Hindi are scarcely taught in the United States, and yet are widely spoken.
Along with adding more languages to the curriculum, beginning the classes in earlier years of school would help the overall effectiveness of learning a foreign language.
Most foreign language classes are not introduced to students until middle or high school levels.
When a child grows up, they are exposed to their native language from the moment they are born, and they have years as they are developing to grasp the language. To mirror the effect in schools, languages should be taught earlier on to give students the ability, as they evolve into maturity, to learn the language.
The use of common languages for their future will be more beneficial in terms of communication. People around the world are able to communicate with each other more easily than in the past.
As humanity continues to advance, foreign language education should advance too.
Xeanne Bhandari • Nov 30, 2021 at 3:29 pm
100% agreed. As someone that is multilingual in 5 languages including Hindi and Mandarin, I totally agree that schools should invest more in foreign languages and allow students to be exposed to a variety of languages from an early age. There are so many advantages to learning commonly spoken languages> in Travel/Career/Intelligence.
In addition, I think schools should hold cultural activities and events once in a while. It could be a local festival celebration, world music dance party, multicultural day, etc. I think this is an excellent way to promote diversity and equality in education, PS. it allows students to have more positive attitudes towards other languages/cultures and expands their worldview.
I enjoyed reading your post.