I knew the English language was spreading across the global. I had not realized how wide spread this “mania” to learn English was.
According to Jay Walker it is mandatory in China to teach English beginning in the 3rd grade. China will soon have more people speaking English than any other country in the world, probably more than England, the US, and Australia combined.
Jay Walker is an American entrepreneur who founded Priceline.com. There is an interesting article in Wired, with pictures, of his amazing personal library.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all
I like the idea of having one language that all the people in the world could speak. A person in China, another in Brazil, a third in Russia, all being able to turn on their computer and speak with each other. The easier it is for the people of the world to communicate with each other, the more the barriers that separate us will come down.
I also like the idea of teaching all our children a second language, beside their native tongue. I think this would encourage intercultural dialogue.
It of course won’t stop us from fighting with each other, such as over what should be the first language of government. In all the countries I can think of people complain about immigrants who can’t speak that countries language, be it English, French or German. I do believe it is preferable to have one language for government.
I think it should be mandatory, as it is in China, to have children taught in school at least one language other than their native tongue. It would be best if the child is given a choice of what to learn. Do you agree or disagree?
I tried two semesters of French in high school and don’t remember anything from it. Of course I don’t remember much of anything I was taught in high school. 
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June 15, 2009 at 5:47 am
lovewillbringustogether
Your comment seems very strange to me (and i am sure many others who live outside America)
Learning a foreign language was compulsory in 3rd grade in the UK where i attended school until age 11 when my parents migrated to Australia.
Here it was not compulsory in the first 7 grades ( but nowadays is a recommended ‘option’ from about age 10, i believe?) but was lamost unavoidable in Secondary schooling.
I had two years of learning French in the UK and then 3 years of learning Italian in High School in Australia.
I did not do all that brilliantly in either as, i believe, learning a language without having it spoken all around you on some kind of regular basis (living in the ‘foreign’ speaking community) makes it very difficult to pick up the lingo so it ’sticks’.
Why would the US be so ‘backward thinking’ and isolationist in this regard?
Do you not care that there are many more people in the world who speak languages other than American?? Or is it practically ‘expected’ everyone learn ‘your’ language? (and weird ways of spelling)
<B
June 15, 2009 at 7:54 pm
edfromct
I am not sure why the US school system does not require students to study a “foreign”, non-english, language.
From Wikipedia
“Curricula in the United States vary widely from district to district. Not only do schools offer a range of topics and quality, but private schools may include religious classes as mandatory for attendance (raising the question of government funding vouchers; see below). This has produced camps of argument over the standardization of curricula and to what degree. Some feel that schools should be nationalized and curricula changed to a national standard. These same groups often are advocates of standardized testing, which is mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act. Aside from who controls curricula, groups argue over the teaching of the English Language, evolution, and sex education.
A large issue facing curricula today is the use of the English language in teaching. English is spoken by over 95% of the nation, and there is a strong national tradition of upholding English as the de facto official language. Some 9.7 million children aged 5 to 17 primarily speak a language other than English at home. Of those, about 1.3 million children do not speak English well or at all. While a few, mostly Hispanic, groups want bilingual education, the majority of school districts are attempting to use English as a Second Language (ESL) course to teach Spanish-speaking students English. In addition, many feel there are threats to the “integrity” of the language itself.”
From the History of education in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States
“To put the historical progress of education in the United States into perspective, American towns began providing high schools in 1910. By 1940, 50% of young adults had earned a high school diploma.”
We also have a growing Home Schooling movement in the US, mostly Christian parents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_schooling#United_States
“Homeschooling has increased tremendously, from 15,000 students in 1970 to 500,000 in 1990. According to United States Department of Education report NCES 2003-42, “Homeschooling in the United States: 2003″, there was an increase in homeschooled students in the U.S. from 850,000 students in 1999 (1.7 percent of the total student population) to 1.1 million students in 2003 (2.2 percent of the total student population).”
“According to an unsourced National Home Education Research Institute statement, an estimated 1.9 to 2.4 million children were home educated during 2005–2006.”
School boards, at the state and city level, have a fair degree of control over what is taught in their schools. I will guess many of there people are very concerned about perserving English as America’s offical language. They probably would strongly object to having their children being “forced” to learn any other language.
June 15, 2009 at 7:19 am
Indian Lake Papa
I tried to learn Swedish for awhile – that did not work out for several reasons – so now I just butcher English.
June 15, 2009 at 7:58 pm
edfromct
My grandmother spoke Irish Gaelic, as did most of her family. Like you I have too many problems with English to attempt to try Gaelic.
June 15, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Joe
Hey all,
This is an interesting post as it’s something I’ve thought a bit about before. I really do think we should be ‘forced’ to learn a language at a younger age here in the US. As English is currently becoming the world standard, we should probably just be able to chose any language we want. If another language were to become the dominant world language, then there could be an issue of forcing that particular language to be learned.
I am a lover of languages so I might be a bit biased. I’ve taken/learned to various degrees, Spanish, German, Latin, Gaelic, Japanese, Polish and I am currently making a big push to become somewhat fluent in Chinese. I think learning a language is one of those things that helps you ‘think’ and has many benefits besides just speaking to someone.
I do see some people in the US who expect others to speak English. I generally think that the US is a pretty hard place to travel in and this is one of the main reasons. If you come here and don’t speak English, you can have a hard time communicating with people around the country. Since everyone speaks our language, I think a lot of times people just discount the value of learning any other language. I have also seen this attitude extend to people traveling. I was with a friend in Germany once and they got really annoyed that the waiter didn’t speak English.
So I guess to bring it back to the post, I do think that there should be more of a push to teach languages earlier in school. And I do think there should be options of what languages to learn. Chinese and Arabic are probably two really important languages right now, but I doubt many schools in America are teaching them.
Good topic!
June 15, 2009 at 8:10 pm
edfromct
Hi Joe. You are right that too many Americans expect the rest of the world to speak like we do. This seems strange since most of us come from families that immigrated from some place else, and spoke their own native tongue when they first came here.
As Love said we are an isolationist country. We only share borders with Canada, also English speaking, except Quebec province, and Mexico. Most Americans have never had to learn another language. I will guess Americans in general know less about the world outside our shores than any other country of “educated” people.
I believe this has lead to far too many mistakes in our foreign policy. In the US we need to learn more about the rest of the world, and one step would be to encourage our children to learn another language.
June 16, 2009 at 10:18 am
Joe
Ed,
Your comment about Americans knowing less of the world than other countries is valid but I think it does a disservice to Americans. Having traveled a bit in China and lived for a short time in Poland, I can tell you that we don’t seem to be that different from other countries.
For example, when I was in Poland, I was amazed at how much the people knew about the general workings of the EU. But thinking about it, why wouldn’t they? But when it came to things going on outside of their country, they were not much better of then we Americans are.
Same thing in China. Well, they had a skewed view of even their own affairs, but when they were asked about things in North or South America, they were sometimes wholey ignorant and probably worse, they were sure they were right when they were just wrong.
Obviously, there are always counterexamples but I’ve always tried to keep this in mind. As a corollary to ‘the grass isn’t always greener’, I try and remember that ‘just because you speak with an accent doesn’t make you smarter.’
June 16, 2009 at 2:21 pm
edfromct
I have never been to Europe, and the last time I spend more than a week in another country was back in 1966, when I was stationed in Japan. You have more first hand knowledge than I do.
My opinions are based on the secondhand news reports in the International sources I read, WorldPress.org, the online editions of the French Le Monde, the British Guardian, and the Christian Science Monitor.
I think the rest of the world knows as little about Americans as we know about them. It seems to me however, that Europeans, and their former colonies, have a better overall knowledge of world events, then the other nations of the world.
As far as understanding other cultures, we in the US didn’t learn anything, as far as I can tell, from WWI or WWII, and either the Korean or Viet Nam conflicts. Our government completely miscalculated the events, and cost, of both ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is in our own best interest to develop a much greater interest in the people, and cultures, that live outside our shores, other than when we go to war.
I think I may have strayed way off topic into rant about war and politics. I should stop here.
June 16, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Joe
Well Ed, as to the original question, I don’t think learning a foreign language is ever a bad thing. It certainly helps us learn both cognitively and culturally. And everyone around the world is somewhat ignorant (in the lack of knowledge sense) and shouldn’t shy away from learning anything that might help combat that!
I’d say it falls in line pretty well with what we’ve been talking about
June 16, 2009 at 5:24 pm
edfromct
Right Joe.
I also don’t see where being able to speak more than one language is ever a bad thing.
The issue in American schools is should all students be required to lean another language beside English.
I suspect to answer to that for many parents is “when hell freezes over”.
June 15, 2009 at 11:30 pm
lovewillbringustogether
i agree with Joe’s point – learning another language helps our brians think.
You can’t learn a new language without learning more about your own – the structure, grammar, etc so you understand how to form sentences that actually make some sense.
As for Home-schooling: i believe our kids education is only as good as our teachers and their education.
While i can see there is some benefit to be gained from having tuition from someone who genuinely wants what is best for the student compared to someone to whom the child is just another one of 35 or 40 in a class they might only see for an hour a day, there must be a limit to the ability to teach a student if you have never has any teaching training or fully understand the current curriculum because you have not studied the most recent education standard in all subjects yourself?
i don’t know that teaching your own child is going to do anything much other than make a ‘poorer’ imitation of yourself? How are they going to learn more than what you know?
Or do we think it will improve the educational standard of both (home) teacher as well as their student?
Does home teaching apply more to our ’social’ education (up to grade 5, 6 or 7 say) than our intellectual education (science, mathematics, language, etc)?
i agree that there does seem to be a link between US foreign policies and the tendency to exist as an ‘isolationist’ nation in many ways such as the unwillingness to open up to the teaching of languages other than English to US students.
There seems to be a long-standing (since Independence) US vs THEM mentality with ‘us’ being the best, naturally
I don’t believe the way to World Peace is to try to make everyone just like ‘us’ but to value our many samenesses more than our differences.
<B
June 16, 2009 at 1:26 pm
edfromct
I haven’t been to school in 48 years. As I also have no children all I know about the quality of education, public, private or home schooled, is what I read about.
The perception in the US seems to be that our public school system is not adequate. Then again parents have been complaining about the school system since I went almost 50 years ago. I suspect it isn’t as bad as people think, but the headlines in our news reinforce this view.
There is clear evidence in all the articles about test scores I read that we don’t teach math and science as well as the schools in Europe and Asia.
With test scores you can find statistics to support which ever view point you have.
From Wikipedia:
“Although there are some studies that show that homeschooled students can do well on standardized tests, some of these studies compare voluntary homeschool testing with mandatory public-school testing. Homeschooled students in the United States are not subject to the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Some U.S. states require mandatory testing for homeschooled students, but others do not. Some states that require testing allow homeschooling parents to choose which test to use. When testing is not required, homeschoolees taking the tests are self-selected, which biases any statistical results. An exception are the SAT and ACT tests, where homeschooled and formally-schooled students alike are self-selecting; homeschoolers averaged higher scores on college entrance tests in South Carolina. Other test scores showed mixed results, for example showing higher levels for home schoolers in English and reading, but lower scores in math.”
My perception is that it is mostly about the degree of control parents want to have over both the social and educational environment of their children. It does come down to the teaching ability of the parent. Some are better that public school teachers, some worse. My perception is that it is in teaching science, and the critical thinking this process requires, that home schooling is not likely to match the result of a public school education.
June 16, 2009 at 7:51 am
Rain
Interesting post, and a topic of much discussion here in south africa. We have eleven official languages because the government feels everybody should have a right to speak there native tongue. But the different languages are a big barrier and literally cut the cultures off from each other. Our national anthem is made up of 5 different languages.
English is my second language but I wouldn’t care if it were the only language worldwide, I believe it will make it easier to get along with others. At school here we are generally taught three languages: home language, first additional language and second language, for my third language I learnt Zulu at school but today I can only really say hello and how are you although I wish I could speak and understand it to get along with others better.
My father lived in Korea for many years teaching English. He would tell me that little 5 and 6 year old kids would have classes until 10pm at night, often falling asleep at their desks, just to learn English, and the government and parents spend millions to teach English to the population but they have a very difficult time learning it as they only watch Korean TV, read korean books, listen to Korean music etc, english shows all have subtitles etc, so they never really get exposed to the language, and when their parents send them to England or America or Australia to learn English they go and live in Korean communities where they only speak Korean. So it seems like its a real battle.
But the big question of course is, if you give up your language do you also give up your culture?
June 16, 2009 at 10:23 am
Joe
Hey Rain,
I think language is a big part of culture. And so I think there is a possibility to lose part of your culture by moving wholesale to another language. However, I think what we are really doing is making an amalgamate of languages. English picks up new foreign words all the time. With Spanish being spoken so much around where I live, I know many Spanish words that I didn’t learn in school.
So I think what’s happening is that while having a common language allows everyone to communicate, it also seems to blur the lines between a lot of cultures. I can go to China and eat in a KFC. I can go downtown in America and eat Ethiopian food. I can travel through London and buy some Chilean pop music.
For better or worse, I think we’re making a global culture.
June 16, 2009 at 1:48 pm
edfromct
Rain, I completely agree with you Rain about the importance of a country having one common language that everyone can speak. There are enough things that can divide people without the complication of not being able to communicate in the same language. This is way I am encouraged by the way English is being taught all over the world.
I also agree with both you and Joe that, from a cultural standpoint, being able to speak the language of your ancestors does help preserve the history fo whatever cultural you come from.
I am hoping that International trade, and the Internet, will continue the development of one common, world wide language. As Joe says even if the base language starts as English the words themselve will evolve.
June 16, 2009 at 4:08 pm
mandythompson
Ed: I read through this post and immediately thought of the bible story about the Tower of Babel, and how man was able to do such things because we could all speak the same language.
Given that story, I don’t know if it’d be a good idea for us to all ban together like that. hmmm……
June 16, 2009 at 5:17 pm
edfromct
Hi Mandy. I find your reference to the Tower of Babel very interesting. I agree you could interprate the guidance in the Bible (Genesis 11?) as meaning that it is God’s intent to have all the different tribes of people living in the world to have their own unique language.
My understanding is that the problem God had with the Tower Of Babel was that it built to demonstrate the glory of mankind. To worship man above God. I don’t see where if the now scattered “tribes” of people all learned to speak one common language, that this is an expression of man’s pride. It would seem to me to be more prideful for a person who lives in a country where their native tongue is not the language of government, but they refuse to learn that official language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_babel
“the Tower of Babel was not built for the worship and praise of God, but was dedicated to the glory of man, with a motive of making a ‘name’ for the builders: “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’” (Genesis 11:4). God, seeing what the people were doing, came down and confounded their languages and scattered the people throughout the earth. It had been God’s original purpose for mankind to grow and fill the earth.”
Since mankind is already scattered around the globe then this could be thought of as evidencing God’s “original purpose”.
Do you, or anyone else who wishes to comment, think that it is against your God’s will for all of mankind to learn to speak one language? That it was God’s intent that all these scattered groups of people speak their own specific language?
June 16, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Joe
Ok, so this will most likely go poorly, I haven’t tried to quote any amount of scripture in… ever.
But during Pentecost, didn’t the Holy Spirit move through the Apostles and allow them to speak one common language so that everyone could understand them?
I could be wrong, I haven’t read over the bible in quite some time.
June 18, 2009 at 12:42 am
lovewillbringustogether
Joe – for a ‘first time’ you did very well, i feel
Pentecost is a Christian festival that celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit, as promised to the Apostles by the Risen Christ, upon them after 49 days (seven weeks of ‘waiting’ from the moment they last ’saw’ Christ in their midst.
A gift of the Spirit is the speaking in ‘tongues’ and also the ability to interpret this ‘gift’.
Paul in the Book of Acts describes how, after the Holy Spirit was received by the Apostles, they were able to speak in tongues and that everyone present heard the Apostles speak ‘in their own language’ even though they came from many different places in the world.
Reading Genesis 11 and Acts 2 there is a clear difference but with a common ‘understanding’…
In Genesis all men spoke with one language (since they were all descendents of Noah and his family) they determined to build one City and cause a ‘tower’ be built that would allow them to reach up to heaven so as to stay ‘in contact’ with God and all would need to stay close to the city if they wished to have ‘official’ contact with their God.
God came and saw what man had planned and saw that they were more interested in doing things their way (the way of a physical connection to heaven and God) than doing what God has asked them to do through Adam.
He knew that if man was allowed to remain in this way of thinking rather than do as He told them (to go forth and multiply and cover the face of the earth – which by building one place that was to be a ‘way’ to God through a physical ‘connection’ to heaven and an ignoring of God’s Word/plan for mankind, would not be following Him Truly) The Lord decided to confound the plan of ‘mankind’ by making it difficult for them to co-operate in a physical way and caused them to be scattered abroad throughout the whole earth – which was directly destroying the intent of mankind who thought it best to stay in one place and build the ‘tower’.
In Acts however, the Apostles listened to the word of God (through His Risen Son) and stayed put until the Holy Spirit was present with them all, then men from all the various nations came to them and heard them speak in their own language, even though the Apostles were known to be men of Galillee who only spoke the local language.
It was the gift of the Holy Spirit (and not of mans’ own devisement/initiation) that caused this ‘miracle’ of all men having a common understanding, despite physically speaking many different languages.
The ‘moral’ of these two books’ chapters is very clear (to me) – listen to God first and do not try to follow man’s (your own) way (believing in/listening to the ‘physical’ creations of man’s mind ‘over’ His) but listen to God and accept the Holy Spirit within us first and foremost.
That is the ‘way’ to develop a perfect understanding and ‘common’ language.
I do not believe that many people within any one religion have managed to place God First over their own prejudiced way of acting and thinking. and hence the reason ‘religion’ has seemingly ‘failed’ in achieving a common understanding so far.
I remain hopeful that when we are Truly ‘lead by the Spirit’ and not by selfish self-interests we can begin to ‘man’ifest the perfection of God’s Plan.
at least that’s how i see it
<B
June 18, 2009 at 3:46 am
edfromct
I share your view Love, except the part about the existence of God.
It would seem to me that the “common language” of God would be the one “spoken” through the Holy Spirit Christ Followers believe is within them.
Although believers all over the word speak many different languages with their mouths, they all hear in the same tongue when they listen to their Holy Spirit. That is their common language
Too often the words that come out of their mouths, perhaps reflecting their egos more than their Spirit, create barriers, and conflicts.
June 18, 2009 at 10:40 pm
lovewillbringustogether
i am in certain agreement with your last paragraph
So can we both agree there might be some kind of ‘unifying’ ‘aspect’ of what we all are as human beings (we termed a ‘holy spirit’)? that perhaps science has not yet managed to dissect, detect and quantify – or do you have a ’suspect’ in mind??
<B
June 19, 2009 at 12:17 am
edfromct
Just looking at the incredible complexity of the brain, and the fact that it is continuing to evolve, I suspect you may have a better chance of reaching a complete understanding of your God’s guidance, well before scientist are anywhere near being able to dissect, detect and quantify the estimated ten billion neurons in the brain and the quadrillion (at birth) synapses connecting to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurons
“The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 1010 (ten billion) neurons <ref. <Blinkov, S.M. and Glezer, I.I. The Human Brain in Figures and Tables. A Quantitative Handbook, New York: Plenum Press, 1968)has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1015 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 1014 to 5 x 1014 synapses (100 to 500 trillion)."