Intra-Q&E Debate!

Not to bust up Kevin's emerging consensus, but if we're going to start making foreign language a mandatory part of the elementary school curriculum (which I think IS a good idea), I don't think we should make it mandatory that the language taught be Spanish. I don't disagree with Kevin that Spanish is useful to know (it comes in very handy for me all the time), but as a Romance language it's much easier to learn as an adult or teen than lots of other languages. So why not teach elementary school students Mandarin Chinese, which I keep hearing is going to be increasingly useful in the business world as China's economy grows, or one of the Dravidian languages, in light of the growth of India's economy, or Arabic, which, given the many problems in the Middle East right now, I can't imagine our national security aparatus isn't going to have growing demand for for some time to come. These languages are all extremely difficult to learn well as an adult, and there's a real shortage of speakers of them for both business and government. Obviously, you'd run into major teacher supply issues trying to make any of these languages mandatory, but that's not a reason not to encourage schools to include them in the mix of languages being taught to young children, or to experiment with innovative ways to draw on the many native speakers of these languages already in the U.S. to help children learn them.