Covering the business of education and training

The U.S. Department of Education has some interesting facts/articles. I stumbled upon one this morning that articulates the need for foreign language education.

Consider these nine facts -

1. More than 200 million children in China are studying English, a compulsory subject for all Chinese primary school students.

2. Only about 24,000 of approximately 54 million elementary and secondary school children in the United States are studying Chinese.

3. According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, only 31% of American elementary schools (and 24% of public elementary schools) report teaching foreign languages.

4. 79% of those schools focus on giving introductory exposure to a language rather than achieving overall proficiency.

5. Only 44% of American high school students are enrolled in foreign language classes as reported by the 2002 Digest of Education Statistics.

6. Of those students, 69% are enrolled in Spanish and 18% in French.

7. Less than 1% of American high school students combined study Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Urdu.

8. Less than 8% of United States undergraduates take foreign language courses, and less than 2% study abroad in any given year.

9. Foreign language degrees account for only 1% of undergraduate degrees conferred in the United States.

The rest of the world is learning how to communicate in English...which is good for English speakers. However, when the partners you are negotiating turn to look and confer with one another the English speaker will have no idea what is going on.

Think that doesn't make a difference?

Think again.

American students need to start learning foreign languages. And if not for security reasons, consider how much fun it is to communicate in a foreign language.

What do you think?