re: #125 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Besides the overall student enrollement decline (which is itself a story that informs us of the state of the State of West Virginia), there’s this:

This is a long-term trend.

The learning of a foreign language is hard for most of us (and I do mean me.)

It’s something that cannot be bluffed through in college. It’s actually hard unless you are one of those people for whom learning languages as an adult (even as a young adult) is straight forward.

When I went to college I did not have a foreign language requirement, because I was in majors where that had already been the case for many years. Foreign language requirements for a B.S. didn’t exist, while at my university some B.A. programs did require such.

Engineering majors also typically did not have a foreign language requirement.

The deeper problem going forward, though, is that English will not always be the dominant language for science and engineering.

It is now, of course.

But a hundred years from now that could change.

Latin was the language of academia for centuries… until it wasn’t.

The darker side of all of this: Americans feel they don’t have to be interested in other cultures. I bet most young people in WV have never been outside the of the US. I bet most people in WV never deal with people from other parts of the world.

It’s an oddly self-destructive thing: sitting back in provincialism while one’s life is ever more dependent upon world events and global commerce.

But it’s where we’re at today.

Americans not learning foreign languages is an embarrassment. Areas in particular that need more humanities and foreign language training are engineering and tech. There is no field that expects complete competence by graduation. For that reason I think of it as either a gateway to proficiency or as a kind of anthropology course (if taught well). That’s just my opinion (signed, someone who has taught a foreign language at high school and college level in the past with pride). But the part about “and no administrative jobs were lost” hurts because that bloating has been happening for over 20 years and in most colleges and universities you could hire 1.5 or 2 faculty for each administrator.