I mean the whole school I went through kept nailing in our heads how much a foreign language would benefit you. I guess this went under the noses of whoever like teaching kids to balance a checkbook.
West coast Canadian who is proud of Canada’s French history but can’t speak French.
Language needs to be used in daily life for a lot of people.
I’ve met countless immigrants who can’t speak very good English after being here for years because they just don’t speak it at home, only when they need to put in public.
Which is no different than me learning French from grade 6 to 8 and not being able to learn it, though I do understand it more than I expected that one time I was in Quebec City for 2 weeks (absolutely lovely city, and the Thai soup I had from Don Vegan, the cities first vegan only restaurant, was the best Thai soup I’ve ever had. DELICIOUS! But I digress) It’s just a symptom of not needing it in your life because I’m just not around it. I’m not a super outgoing person either and I’ve never been good at getting a conversation going so my own hurdles are certainly part of this, but I’ve worked with a lot of immigrants and I think in spite of my bias, it’s pretty accurate.
America isn’t much different in that regard, unless you are on a southern border there’s significantly less opportunity to have other languages be part of the fabric of the average americans personal lives. Not impossible but just a lot less likely
The wall was meant to keep you in.
How common is it for students in non-English speaking countries to learn a second language that isn’t English? I would imagine not very. Learning a second language isn’t very useful if you’re not going to use it, and learning it won’t be easy if you aren’t immersed in it.
To be fair it’s tough to be proficient in a language you don’t get to use. In some places in the US, there’s plenty of Spanish speaking people. Other than that not so much.
Because education in the USA is a sad joke? Republicans have been hollowing out education for the past 5 decades or so and they worked hard trying to shove fundamentalist christianity in schools and science classes specifically
The US is tucked and can get fucked
Although it’s been shown learning another language as a child changes the way your mind works, there’s only so much money in the teaching budget and so many hours in the day. Conservatives want to take both from our kids, for their own ends, so justifying the value of the resources to the student is a perennial challenge.
Given the low proficiency of current grads with their first language, and basic skills like punctuation and spelling, I say we’re a LONG way before we can open a second language in the curriculum.
Because money. More classes more money. Less common skill set, more money.
If you don’t live in a border state the chances of using a second language enough to really learn it well and become proficient are really small unless you have close family members that speak it.
I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school but live about 12 hours from the Mexican border so I didn’t use it enough to retain much.
Learning a second language might open perspectives and expose children to ideas. The GOP can’t afford such smart kids.
Everyone coming up with conspiratorial reasons why this is not the case but it’s much simple than that. It’s not feasible and it’s expensive and the returns aren’t really worth it.
Kids in school have a bunch of other subjects they have to learn besides foreign languages. You can add one or two languages but then at some point you will need to remove other subjects to add more or you need to keep kids in school even more. Both are not really feasible. Then you need to hire teachers for all these new languages which most places won’t do.
Another issue is with the way they teach languages in schools. They expect you to pass a test and not actually learn the language so a lot of the languages will not “stick” as the students lack immersion and practice with that language. I can speak for myself, I have learned two languages besides my native language in school: French and English. I had French since 2nd grade, which is 10 years of French classes and English since 5th grade which is 7 years of English classes. Today I can speak English fluently and like 3 words of French. The difference was that I was always immersed in English, though video games, movies, songs and so on. Not so much with French. I have noticed the same pattern with most of my friends and family members.
Because the system is designed to make it so you never leave and you never have the upper hand.
English has 1.5B fluent speakers spread across the entire globe. Hardly an insular language.
This is far more about discrimination - freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services, segregating English speakers from minority speakers, abolishing First Nations language and culture.
Also very important to keep Americans from reading foreign language press.
Sorry, but I really am failing to make the connection between how learning a second language as an optional class leads to “freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services”. You don’t even need to speak English to access those most of the time. In my city, nearly all public services are available in English and Spanish at the minimum, and frequently Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian as well.
I really am failing to make the connection between how learning a second language as an optional class leads to “freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services”.
American public school kids don’t normally get access to electives until at 6th grade (sometimes not until 8th or 9th grade depending on the state and district). So “optional” in theory is a deliberate effort to delay bilingual learning in practice.
Mono-lingual populations are more easily primed towards hostility against minority speakers. So your senior staff is biased towards English as a primary language when hiring the next generation of public workers. And these workers are increasingly both unable and unwilling to provide services in secondary languages. This creates a natural barrier for any minority speaker from even interacting with public bureaucracies.
In my city, nearly all public services are available in English and Spanish at the minimum, and frequently Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian as well.
Bigger and more egalitarian cities, with large minority-language populations can staff their departments with fluent minority-language speakers. And under more liberal and egalitarian governments, they do. But as the population grows more reactionary, these kinds of skills get drummed out of the bureaucracy.
This isn’t even a new problem in government.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 2,500 troops Tuesday about the foreign-language skills he championed as a congressman, an active-duty Army officer was complaining about the paucity of military personnel who can speak anything other than English.
But it has become an increasingly domestic issue, as fascists take command of the bureaucratic core.
On March 1, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 13166, which designated English as the United States’ official language. This Executive Order is no longer theoretically in effect, and existing federal civil rights laws and regulations require language access for individuals with limited English proficiency in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
Nonetheless, numerous federal entities are pursuing policies prioritizing English as the only language, effectively reducing or eliminating Spanish.
I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all
Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward
I know it varies from state to state, but where I’ve lived it’s an “elective” in that you got to pick which language to take of the available options (some schools might only have two choices, others four or even five), but taking a certain number of foreign language credits was required for graduation. If you wanted to go beyond the minimum and had room in your schedule you could.
Because it would upset the racists (republicans)
The problem in the US is that besides English, you might be exposed to some Spanish. And not much else unless you seek it out. Or have immigrant friends. Without consistent practice, and some more native speakers, any learned language just rots away.
I learned German for several years in college. It was fun. Went to a local brewhouse with my classmates and talked in simple german while we had dinner, it was a good time. Now, other than my own attempts at saving my whithered skill, and a couple bedtime songs for my kids, I don’t use it.
And even when I was better at it, using it as a tourist in germany was moderately helpful, but it wouldn’t have been nearly enough skill to pass any kind of immigration language proficiency exams.
