>Instead of learning a foreign language, Michigan students could take computer coding classes to replace the high school graduation requirement, under a bill that passed the state House Tuesday.
>Currently, the Michigan Merit Curriculum, which dictates the state’s academic standards for graduation, requires students to take two world language credits to receive a high school diploma.
So Michigan is denying a high school diploma to anyone who is unable to learn a foreign language? Sounds like a great way to increase the dropout rate and doom hundreds of thousands to a life of poverty. This looks like someone in academia for far too long has decided that it would be really neat if everyone was able to speak multiple languages and if they don't, well, they can go live in an alleyway and beg for passersby for change. The consequences of lowering the graduation rate, especially amongst the already disadvantaged, cannot be emphasized enough. This is absolutely deplorable.
Where I grew up it wasn't required for a HS diploma, but necessary for college admission--or something like that.
Under their criteria, ASL (American Sign Language) qualified as a foreign language. The reasoning being that a distinct culture was taught along with the language and Deaf culture qualified. I've never needed it, and could converse using it, but it has stuck with me. Unfortunately, my school dropped it and I ended up taking two years of Spanish that didn't have anywhere near as much impact. Even more than the Pascal/C++ class even though one is a language I've used professionally.
ASL was so fun to learn! I’ll eventually forget the signs but I hope I remember the letters! The main learning aspect was the culture! A lot of interesting things to learn and talk about!
Since you make no argument why learning a foreign language is different from anything else, your entire post becomes quite meaningless since it could be applied to literally anything. Math certainly lowers the graduation rate. English literature too. History. Biology. etc.
If you want to make a sensible argument, please argue why learning a foreign language is different from learning math, history or whatever else.
Is encouraging programming education in high school good? Maybe, with the right curriculum.
Does making it substitute for foreign language education, and thus effectively, relative to the status quo, discouraging foreign language education make any sense as a way to do that? No, not at all. Not that Michigan is the first place with that boneheaded idea, ISTR it being included in state proposals in a few states, and a version of it even in a federal bill (don’t think any passed) on the last few years.
Back in the 80s I got college foreign language credit for taking CompSci courses. I ended up taking the algorithms and data structures as well as assembly language, FORTRAN, and Prolog (in the summer). A total of 15 credit hours I think, I don't recall exactly.
In retrospect, while the courses have been extremely valuable, I wouldn't recommend programming as a substitute for foreign language studay.
I substituted a language for robotics and web development in high school - without that I would 100% be a corporate lawyer and wouldn’t be enjoying it.
I’m not sure it’s so important to learn a foreign language in high school, I wouldn’t cut any other subjects for it.
I took CS among others in high school but didn’t have to sacrifice foreign language for it. It uses different parts of your brain.
Honestly, my exposure to foreign languages has helped me at various points building tech where I may have made a wholly English centric view about encodings, data models, etc.
The other thing about studying foreign language is that it encourages foreign travel and teaches us about other cultures which only stand to make us more well rounded students and people.
Maybe my opinion is the minority, but I feel so positive about the benefits of language study that we try to get our kids in the 1/2 day language immersion program at their elementary each year. Apparently in my area enough people feel the same as we’ve lost out on the lottery the last two years :(
It’s easy to ignore various humanities/social studies when we are interested in learning about such different things like CS and robotics.
At university my engineering classes were in fancy new buildings but a lot of my general studies classes were in old uncomfortable buildings that would always be too hot or too cold- just adding to the misery of studying something I had no interest in.
I’m still glad for every one of those boring classes I took. I wouldn’t have known how much I absolutely loved studying Greek/Roman mythology, basic philosophy, and early North American native archeology.
Why is the reverse OK, requiring foreign language but not other things? Space in the curriculum is competitive.
For most people, studying a foreign language in school for a couple of years is essentially useless. That's not how human language learning works. (For one, it's a fee years too late. For two, it's not immersive.)
> Does making it substitute for foreign language education, and thus effectively, relative to the status quo, discouraging foreign language education make any sense as a way to do that? No, not at all.
Of the two, programming education is probably the more useful. With a small amount of programming education, you can automate simple tasks. I would expect that taking 2 years of a programming class would leave you at least able to use existing libraries to perform basic tasks. You know what I can do with my 2 years of high school Spanish and a year of college Spanish? Nothing. I never had a reason to use it, so it languished. Even when the knowledge was fresh, my vocabulary and general comprehension were too poor to have anything other than scripted conversations. I can order food in Spanish, but God forbid they respond with anything other than "si" because it's going to go right over my head.
I'm not alone in that. Every single one of my friends took a second language in high school, and only 2 of them can actually converse and read their other language. And both of them learned at home from their parents, not in high school.
Being bilingual would be great for students, but that's not what we're getting out of second languages in high school. We're getting people that know how to ask where the library is, and can't understand the response. It's a waste of time. We either need to double down and start the language learning process much earlier and invest more time in making students fluent, or admit that the classes are mostly a novelty and allow other more useful things to take their place.
I don't necessarily object to high schoolers substituting foreign languages for computer science, but if you don't think of foreign languages as a strict requirement, you should allow other substitutions, like art or music classes.
Doing this way makes them seem either clueless (programming and foreign languages serve different educational goals) or disingenuous.
Encouraging students to take coding classes is great, but maybe not at the expense of expanding horizons and knowledge of other cultures around the world. Learning a foreign language conveys many benefits beyond just the language itself.
That's a very native English speaker-centric point of view... Here in Europe we learn English to be able to function in the world, nothing much else. Not many people are interested in any other languages, and Russian was dropped as soon as it got out of importance.
Sounds like you are in Eastern Europe (from the Russian comment). In Scandinavia we all learn English from and early age, but everyone then also takes a second foreign language, usually German, French or Spanish (all incredibly useful if you live in Europe), but some schools also have more exotic alternatives.
Same in India, most students take 3 languages in their school career - English, a native regional language (typically Hindi), and a third language, which can range from Japanese to Sanskrit (i.e. Latin but Indic)
Eastern European here. Nearly every university-educated person I know has at least interest in Spanish, and often already some solid knowledge of the language from e.g. telenovelas or doing Erasmus in Spain.
Where are you from exactly? Here in Czechia compulsory third language started only in 2017 (plus minus), and the education is not really great - many people have serious problems with English, and adding the third language didn't really help them with that either.
I think encouraging programming isn't exactly the best idea for most students. At an intro level it's not very useful to most, of whom many will not go beyond. Even exposure isn't worthwhile because HS educators will not know what they're doing unless they're an actual CS instructor.
Well, to be fair, encouraging foreign language isn't exactly the best idea for most students. Higher priorities might include some understanding of economics, law, personal finances, golf, negotiating, public speaking, time management, decorum, and... basically everything else.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 67.9 ms ] thread>Instead of learning a foreign language, Michigan students could take computer coding classes to replace the high school graduation requirement, under a bill that passed the state House Tuesday.
>Currently, the Michigan Merit Curriculum, which dictates the state’s academic standards for graduation, requires students to take two world language credits to receive a high school diploma.
Under their criteria, ASL (American Sign Language) qualified as a foreign language. The reasoning being that a distinct culture was taught along with the language and Deaf culture qualified. I've never needed it, and could converse using it, but it has stuck with me. Unfortunately, my school dropped it and I ended up taking two years of Spanish that didn't have anywhere near as much impact. Even more than the Pascal/C++ class even though one is a language I've used professionally.
Sign languages are not like writing systems, they are distinct languages with their own grammar etc, it's very cool!
If you want to make a sensible argument, please argue why learning a foreign language is different from learning math, history or whatever else.
Does making it substitute for foreign language education, and thus effectively, relative to the status quo, discouraging foreign language education make any sense as a way to do that? No, not at all. Not that Michigan is the first place with that boneheaded idea, ISTR it being included in state proposals in a few states, and a version of it even in a federal bill (don’t think any passed) on the last few years.
In retrospect, while the courses have been extremely valuable, I wouldn't recommend programming as a substitute for foreign language studay.
I’m not sure it’s so important to learn a foreign language in high school, I wouldn’t cut any other subjects for it.
Honestly, my exposure to foreign languages has helped me at various points building tech where I may have made a wholly English centric view about encodings, data models, etc.
The other thing about studying foreign language is that it encourages foreign travel and teaches us about other cultures which only stand to make us more well rounded students and people.
Maybe my opinion is the minority, but I feel so positive about the benefits of language study that we try to get our kids in the 1/2 day language immersion program at their elementary each year. Apparently in my area enough people feel the same as we’ve lost out on the lottery the last two years :(
It’s easy to ignore various humanities/social studies when we are interested in learning about such different things like CS and robotics.
At university my engineering classes were in fancy new buildings but a lot of my general studies classes were in old uncomfortable buildings that would always be too hot or too cold- just adding to the misery of studying something I had no interest in.
I’m still glad for every one of those boring classes I took. I wouldn’t have known how much I absolutely loved studying Greek/Roman mythology, basic philosophy, and early North American native archeology.
Why is the reverse OK, requiring foreign language but not other things? Space in the curriculum is competitive.
For most people, studying a foreign language in school for a couple of years is essentially useless. That's not how human language learning works. (For one, it's a fee years too late. For two, it's not immersive.)
Of the two, programming education is probably the more useful. With a small amount of programming education, you can automate simple tasks. I would expect that taking 2 years of a programming class would leave you at least able to use existing libraries to perform basic tasks. You know what I can do with my 2 years of high school Spanish and a year of college Spanish? Nothing. I never had a reason to use it, so it languished. Even when the knowledge was fresh, my vocabulary and general comprehension were too poor to have anything other than scripted conversations. I can order food in Spanish, but God forbid they respond with anything other than "si" because it's going to go right over my head.
I'm not alone in that. Every single one of my friends took a second language in high school, and only 2 of them can actually converse and read their other language. And both of them learned at home from their parents, not in high school.
Being bilingual would be great for students, but that's not what we're getting out of second languages in high school. We're getting people that know how to ask where the library is, and can't understand the response. It's a waste of time. We either need to double down and start the language learning process much earlier and invest more time in making students fluent, or admit that the classes are mostly a novelty and allow other more useful things to take their place.
Doing this way makes them seem either clueless (programming and foreign languages serve different educational goals) or disingenuous.