Letters to the Editor
Mishima666
Published Letters: 128 Editor's Choice: 29
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Concerning language learning . . . .
[Read the article: The few. The culturally aware. The Language Corps]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's no doubt that we need a lot more people in the country with language proficiency. But there are some problems:
1) Having a "need" is not the same as having a "market," with real jobs and opportunities available. If we expect students to spend countless hours learning a language, there has to be some payback.
Where I work there are a number of people with terrific language skills. One woman has a BA in Spanish. She has a stunningly good accent, virtually flawless. She works as a receptionist at the front desk. The other receptionist is fluent in Vietnamese. The office manager is fluent in German and Spanish. The guy who sorts and delivers mail and packages speaks Japanese. One woman who speaks Chinese, Japanese, and French is a kind of low-level administrative or clerical worker.
Now before we start shoving all the high school and college students into language programs, we need to ask why we're not using the people who are ALREADY fluent in another language. In fact, you show me someone in the U.S. who is multilingual, and I'll show you someone who is probably greatly under-employed.
2) There is an opportunity cost to studying a foreign language. You spend two years studying German in college, that's two years you didn't spend studying math, accounting, chemistry, computer science, and other things that might actually lead to a job.
3) People talk about the "importance" of taking two years of a foreign language in college. But the reality is that in most programs two years of language study gives you only a rudimentary oral proficiency. You end up translating poetry and reading short stories, but you can't have a meaningful conversation in the other language.
4) Any time someone recommends foreign language study, ask if he or she is fluent is another language. When the president of the company says that all college students should have two years of language study, ask how many jobs are available in that company for people with that level of training. (The answer is almost always "none.")
Being proficient in a foreign language is great, but currently the costs in time and money far outweigh the benefits for most individuals. We have to find a way to turn the need for foreign language proficiency into a market, with actual jobs, opportunities, and money.
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A simple question.
[Read the article: Should I stay in my marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's a difficult situation, and I can't possibly know what the "right" answer is. But here's a simple question:
Are the kids better off with an intact family, or would they be better off with separate households? That is a simple question, but that doesn't mean that there is a simple answer.
What I'm suggesting is an ethic that is centered around the needs of children. In other words, needs of children trump our own needs. Sometimes people remain married when they shouldn't. Sometimes they divorce when they shouldn't.
That said, if the marriage is destroying you -- if the marriage is simply intolerable -- then your own sanity becomes the prevailing factor.
If that's not the situation, then the needs of the children should prevail. What I'm suggesting in that case is the importance of a concept that is out of fashion in some quarters -- the concept of self-sacrifice. It is a spiritual concept that cannot be justified by an appeal to rationality. It is a spiritual concept that may make you the object of ridicule. People will say "you're crazy, why are you doing this?"
Viktor Frankl wrote "Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward."
If this is something you can do, then do it. If not, then don't. But in sacrificing who you think you are, you may find who you really are. Best wishes.