Despite criticism from the right, today Barack Obama stood by his call for American schools to increase their emphasis on teaching foreign languages. On Tuesday, Obama said, “We should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age.” This brought the wrath of the right wing immigrant haters who claims that Obama wants to teach American kids Spanish but not force immigrants to learn English.
Obama clarified and stood by his earlier in statement in Dayton, Ohio today, “I said something the other day down in Georgia, and the Republicans jumped on this. I said, you know, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages.”
He called this flap a problem that comes up when somebody tries to tell the truth, “This is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth, which is we should want children with more knowledge. We should want our children to have more skills. There’s nothing wrong with that! It’s a good thing.”
Obama didn’t say that American kids had to learn Spanish. He said that American students should learn a foreign language. Studies show that students who learn a foreign language have higher test scores. Plus most four year colleges and universities have a foreign language requirement, so students who aren’t taught a foreign language earlier are less prepared for college.
I am also a strong believer that English language proficiency must be a requirement for immigrants coming into this country. Anyone who doesn’t speak English is putting themselves at a disadvantage in our economy, and immigrants who speak English earn more money than those who don’t.
No matter how much the immigrant haters try to fence and wall us in, they can’t deny that we live in a global economy, and the ability to speak multiple languages benefits both the foreign worker who comes to the United States, and the American worker who works abroad. It is a no brainer to suggest that our public school curriculum should be updated to reflect the realities of the 21 st Century, but those who want to live in a white world that is stuck in the past will always find a way to resist change.
Obama quotes came from here.
Another language should be taught in public schools starting in 1st grade. Parents could be given a choice of say Spanish or German, for example. By the time the children were in 5th grade they would already have a working fluency of that language. Speaking another language helps your mind to think more in both abstract AND technical terms.
I have friends who were raised in bilingual familes (including Italian, German and Spanish) and the children in these families always seemed to get good grades and were not afraid to tackle new subjects in school. Speaking a second language strengthens the character and exercises the mind. It can only be a benefit to require a second language, there really is no downside to it!
I am not a fluent speaker of other languages, but I have studied two of them, and it made me a better student and a more well rounded person. I lived with international students for years, and it was a great experience not only for me, but for my American friends too, but one of the things that always gets pointed out is whether my roommate was European or Asian was their ability to speak mutiple languages, compared to we Americans. It is a bit embarrassing to say the least.
First, I can barely speak English correctly, however I did take three semesters of Spanish (I just finished up SPAN 201 a few weeks ago) and I wish I could take another Spanish class. For the record, I was a straight C student in the Spanish classes, but it taught me more than any other class so far. We need our childern to learn other lanuages to be more worldly, less narrow minded when it comes to other cultures. but thats just me.