Should Spanish be a required course in American schools?

[Vyraura]

Hello there

my above post still applies :/

 

[Ruby]

So what about all the people who do not live in the american southwest, and might want to learn a different language?

Well I think it should be compulsory in the American southwest, then.

 

[Vyraura]

And if you live in northern california? How specific are you going to be? Any state that is partially in the 'southwest'? Any state that has a large hispanic population? What happens when you have students who plan on leaving the region the moment they graduate for another place; do you want to force them to learn a language that loses its major use once they're done learning it?

There is already a huge number of people who prefer Spanish to other languages, due to the pronunciation ease. There is no reason to punish the small minority who have personal reasons as to take a different language by forcing them to learn either two, or the one they do not wish to know.

 

[Ruby]

And if you live in northern california? How specific are you going to be? Any state that is partially in the 'southwest'? Any state that has a large hispanic population? What happens when you have students who plan on leaving the region the moment they graduate for another place; do you want to force them to learn a language that loses its major use once they're done learning it?

There is already a huge number of people who prefer Spanish to other languages, due to the pronunciation ease. There is no reason to punish the small minority who have personal reasons as to take a different language by forcing them to learn either two, or the one they do not wish to know.

If the United States were smaller, I should suggest the teaching of Spanish in all states. But the federal system of the United States lends itself to something more subtle. I am going to be this specific: make Spanish compulsory in states where it is widely spoken. I suppose widely can be defined as a percentage.

Some of your argument can be applied to English. If the last two years of English classes weren't compulsory, most people would still go to them. There's no reason to punish a small minority who will leave the country after they graduate.

In fact I don't know why learning Spanish is a punishment. Everyone has to study things at school which he does not want to study. It seems to me that Spanish is at any rate more useful than Chemistry and other subjects.

 

[Vyraura]

If the United States were smaller, I should suggest the teaching of Spanish in all states. But the federal system of the United States lends itself to something more subtle. I am going to be this specific: make Spanish compulsory in states where it is widely spoken. I suppose widely can be defined as a percentage.

What percentage would be considered 'reasonable'?

Some of your argument can be applied to English. If the last two years of English classes weren't compulsory, most people would still go to them. There's no reason to punish a small minority who will leave the country after they graduate.

Except English classes have absolutely nothing to do with learning the language. Sorry.

In fact I don't know why learning Spanish is a punishment. Everyone has to study things at school which he does not want to study. It seems to me that Spanish is at any rate more useful than Chemistry and other subjects.

Making Spanish compulsory makes about as much sense as making classes related to basic labor force jobs compulsory, because that's what most people do when they leave school. Chemistry, to use your example, is only mandatory because it's part of the required 'knowledge base' before you go out into school; simply an advancement of the science classes you had when you were in Elementary school. A foreign language falls under the same category. However, by specializing it to only Spanish, this is about as useful as having everyone taking chemistry for four years.

I will certainly admit that learning Spanish would be most useful in the states where it is spoken most frequently. It should even be encouraged, or made the default. But denying the opportunity to learn another language which you are effectively supporting is narrow-minded and harsh.

And no, you can't claim that someone could simply take both Spanish and another language class. I do not know a single person who has that much room in their schedule.

 

[surskitty]

And there is little room for lengthening the school day for high school students as they want people to be at work by four.

 

[Adriane]

My high school got out just before four :\

As for schedule room, etc., it all depends on how your school works its schedules. I knew people who were taking three classes at once. I'd also like to point that the arguement is not merely for high school and... I don't know of a single high school in the US that requires Spanish. (Perhaps in the southwest, I'm not too familiar there)

 

[zuea]

no spanish in American schools i like Chinese

 

[Crazy Linoone]

So, I'd like to revise my position. I think that any foreign language should be required; most people here agree with this. However, in the case that a school can only have one foreign language class, Spanish should take precedence over all other classes. In addition, I'm sort of teetering on making Spanish classes mandatory for at least one year or maybe throughout Elementary school, but I'm not sure.

I think we should teach little kids how to use proper grammar before we move on to not-as-common foreign languages. There really isn't a point teaching little kids a foreign language --Elementary school is the time to build the foundation. American schools already have enough trouble with math and science already, so spending time and money to teach Spanish (which is not as useful) to little kids is not a good idea.

-Americans can actually practice Spanish. Classes are worth shit if you don't have people to speak to; I learned this from my French classes in 8th grade and decided to actually put more effort into my work and do some work outside of the curriculum to better understand the language. Now, I'm pretty sure Spanish is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the US, second to English. American students will actually have a chance to test their Spanish skills and find an opportunity to use them. If this is possible, then they'll be encouraged to better learn the language and already have a strong base if they decide to drop Spanish for something else.

Well, the thing is that if your whole school is learning French, you would automatically have people to speak French to. I must agree that being able to understand what that person cutting the trees for you is very useful (not sarcasm; it actually is quite useful), but there are pretty much no other times you would use Spanish. Same with most other languages, actually, unless you want to go up to random strangers and talk to them.

Another thing is that the number of people who speak Spanish vary from place to place. For example, I live in sunny California, and you'd think that everyone would be jabbering in Spanish there (supposively 35% of all Californians are Hispanic). You would be completely wrong, because Chinese is the most common second language where I live. There are probably less than 3% Hispanics here, so making Spanish mandatory here is just plain, to put it bluntly, stupid. I suppose that in other places, where there are more Hispanics, teaching Spanish would be a good idea. However, it has to vary from region to region.

-Spanish is closer to many languages of Europe than English. English has many rare phonemes, while Spanish has a pretty typical set of phonemes that will make it easier to pronounce another language. The sounds of English are practically of no help to me when I'm speaking French or Russian, but using Spanish as a base I can have a better native language. Spanish is also closer grammatically to the other languages of Europe, especially the Romance languages. Knowing Spanish, having taken maybe even a year of it, is much more helpful in learning other Romance languages than using just English. If you choose to branch off of the Romance languages and advance into something else, you'll still have a better foundation than having taken English alone.

Uh, can't refute that. However, why Spanish? Why not make French mandatory instead of Spanish? Or Russian? This is a good point to make a language mandatory, but not a good point to make Spanish mandatory.
One can also argue on the question of "what if I want to take Chinese?". If I want to take Chinese, then learning Spanish is of no use to me.

-If you decide that you don't like Spanish and don't study another language after taking it, you will be stuck with a useful language (or at least know enough key phrases to get what you want out of people). If you were studying Swahili and lost interest in it, there would be little chance of using your language. THis leads to my next point:

Chinese is useful, too, and probably more useful that Spanish in later life because Chinese manufactures most of our stuff now, and knowing Chinese will be helpful in business. Hindi is also useful, since a lot of Indians are now coming to the US to get jobs and succeeding at it. The chance that your future boss is going to be Indian is higher than the chance that your future boss is going to be Hispanic.

-Spanish is painfully easy. Most people find Spanish to be an incredibly easy language. It has logical orthography, no crazy sounds to distinguish or make (except for maybe the flapped and trilled 'r'), and grammar comfortably close to English's (and this grammar is also much closer to other European languages than English, as already mentioned). A good part of the vocabulary is cognates with English. It is definitely a great beginner's language, and the learning curve isn't too steep, either. If you decide to drop Spanish before getting into more advanced stuff (and yes, naysayers, Spanish becomes difficult), you will know enough Spanish to have normal (not too deep) conversations with people and perhaps understand a spanish-only manual. If you drop Arabic after only a year, you will not know enough to converse with people, you certainly won't know enough to read, and you will be stuck with poor skills in a language that you won't have a chance to use (both because of your poor skills and the relative scarcity of Arabic speakers outside of the Arab world).

Why does an easy course has to be mandatory? Shouldn't a harder course be mandatory to force people to use their brains and learn? Although I must admit that knowing a bit of Spanish is more useful than knowing a bit of Chinese or Hindi (since those two languages are insanely complicated), the chance that you'll remember enough to be useful after a few years is... Tiny, at best.

In short, Spanish is really an investment language; you study it to get the vocabulary, the grammar familiar to other European languages, and a good starting platform. If Spanish is not mandatory for any period of time, then it should be strongly reccomended. Spanish is the most logical starting point for an American student; it's easy, it's closer to other European languages (and even non-Indo-European languages), and it's useful. Although knowledge of Mandarin or Arabic may be more advantageous, these are languages with cultures rather unlike our own, very unfamiliar grammar, and not too many speakers outside of their respective countries. In addition, it takes much more time to reach, say, the intermediate level for these languages than for Spanish. Studying Spanish (or really, any other non-English language) puts those who know it (even if it's a little bit) at an advantage over those who don't know it, both for speaking to people (especially within the US, what with 12% of its speakers knowing Spanish) and learning other languages.

Again, I must say that most of the ~12% people who speak Spanish live around the southwestern part of the US, namely the lower part of California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Unless you live in those parts, you will barely meet anybody who speaks Spanish. Learning French or German might actually be more useful, since there are quite a few people who speak them in the eastern parts of US. They also provide the nice support for learning other European languages, so yay.

Now, I have to say that as someone who loves languages and as a native Spanish speaker that knowing Spanish is really much more helpful for me when studying languages than English, which I consider my second native language (and which I know to a much better degree than Spanish). English lacks many concepts that are common to many languages throughout the world, including Spanish, such as reflexive verbs, null-subject placement (in English, you cannot say 'ran to the store' without prior clarification because the person who ran to the store could be anyone. In Spanish, and additionally German, Russian, and Arabic, the verb conjugation reveals whether I, you, he, she, we, y'all or they ran to the store), and plenty of other things which I cannot recall.

This whole paragraph is about whether a foreign language in general should be required in American schools. If you think of it like this:

If Spanish is similar to German, then German is similar to Spanish. Therefore, all your arguments for Spanish helping you learn another language can be applied to German, and everyone should learn German.

This isn't to say that a year or two of Spanish is a magic pill that lets students acquire languages through osmosis; Spanish is a language which, like any other, requires work and devotion. However, Spanish requires significantly less work than, say, Arabic, to get to the same level of fluent speaking. Also, Spanish is also missing other features available amongst some languages, such as declension (argh russian whyyyyy), ergativity (argh hindi whyyyyy) and other stuff. Despite this, I would say that it is most advantageous for American students to start with Spanish, even if they look forward to other languages. Therefore, if Spanish is not required for any period of time, it should be strongly reccomended.

Why should I start with Spanish if I want to take Chinese?

Another thing: Spanish people speak Spanish really, really, really fast. Insanely fast. Faster than Chinese. So fast that I highly doubt that anyone who's not fluent (like a student taking it because it's mandatory) would not be able to understand anything besides a few key words. But of course, a person taking Chinese will only be able to understand a few key words of Chinese, too. And since they can hear the language properly, the would probably be able to understand more.

tl;dr: Spanish is useful, yes, but so are other languages like Chinese and French.

Note: By Indian, I meant the people from India, not the Native Americans. By Chinese, I meant the more common dialects (Mandarin and Cantonese).

 

[Tarvos]

Fuck you guys, I had to take FOUR languages.

 

[Crazy Linoone]

My elementary school had mandatory Spanish for five years, and most of the kids knew that language.

Also, I would argue that Spanish has been far more useful to me in my everyday life and maybe will even be in my future job than all the science (and maybe even math) I've learned so far.

Hm, I suppose it really depends on the job you go into. For the more social kinds (like business or something), you'd be better off knowing lots of languages than science, while for the science oriented kinds, it's better to know, well, science.

You would have amateurs. A good amount of people in my school take French, and their accents are laughable, their grammar is terrible, and their interest is null. You need native speakers to speak to. If we were in... say, Quebec, then you would have more French speakers to speak to and you wouldn't say stuff like "I hamburgers have eat", as some of the kids in my school say (in French, of course).

Uh, didn't think of that.

Thanks for the fucking stereotype.

>.< Sorry if it sounded like I'm being mean; I actually did not meant it as a stereotype. I meant that, for most students, a regular, day-to-day meeting with somebody who speaks Spanish (not counting your teacher) will be the person who cuts your trees (same goes with Chinese if it's a Chinese person cutting your trees), instead of some busy business type (since you'll be at school and s/he will be at work).

Spanish is quite useful in business as well. You'll come across as a better chap if you speak to the head of the Argentinian company you're trying to recruit in Spanish rather than assume they speaker English. If you're going into any type of retail work, then Spanish is also very useful (the aforementioned 12% Hispanophone population). In Quebec, 20% of people speak French at home, but still most retail workers will also speak French as well as English because it's an advantage.

True, true. But you can also say that if you want to speak to the head of a Chinese company, you'd want to speak Chinese.

Although I must admit that in retail, Spanish is good for you.

What about absorbing the culture? ;-;

Well, it's not exactly normal in my parts for a kid to just randomly go up to a group of strangers speaking a relatively foreign language

I agree with you here.

:3

If you learn Spanish, then learning Russian will be much easier, and French is practically a cakewalk. I say this as someone who, suprise! knows Spanish and studies those two languages. Now, the advantage is that with Spanish, you get that knowledge much quicker than with Russian or French. You could start with Russian and still get an advantage in learning future languages, but Russian is more distant from English and harder to comprehend (even knowing three languages, I have trouble with Russian sometimes). If you want to take Mandarin, Spanish will be of minimal use to you, yes. If you start by learning Mandarin, however, you will also have minimal use for THAT unless you then learn other Chinese languages like Cantonese or maybe branch out into Japanese or maaaaybe Korean.

The difficulties of European languages I'm not sure of, but I know that Japanese is basically a piece of cake if you know English and Chinese. So it really depends on where you want to be -- if you want to work in/with people in Asia, learn Chinese. If you want to work in/with people in Europe and Mexico, learn Spanish.

However, many Chinese (especially those in business) are learning English. Having been around the Spanish community, I can't say that it's the same.

True, true.

I love Hindi, but it's far from useful. Most educated Indians (and most of the Indians you will be interacting with will likely be educated unless you want to work in rural India) know English, and rather well. In addition, even if you want to work in rural India, you will be better off studying whatever the local language is since it's more likely you'll find people speaking, say, Gujarati than Hindi.

That too.

You'll remember more Spanish than you will Chinese or Hindi. Also, this easy course should be mandatory or reccomended because it will make harder courses much, much easier. I seriously can't imagine studying even French with only English. I know a lot of people have done it, but the advantage of knowing Spanish is so great and the grammatical structure is so similar with French than I can't imagine life without it.

I would agree with recommended, but not mandatory, because there would always be the people who want to learn an Oriental language.

Question: Wouldn't a person who knew French find Spanish extremely easy in the same way as a person who knew Spanish find French extremely easy? So why not study French first?

There aren't that many people speaking French or German, and they will more than likely be concentrated in certain areas. take a look at this chart of the most spoken languages in the US.

English - 215 million
Spanish - 28 million (13%)
Chinese languages - 2.0 million + (mostly Cantonese speakers, with a growing group of Mandarin speakers) (0.9%)
French - 1.6 million (0.7%)
German - 1.4 million (High German) + German dialects like Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Plautdietsch... (0.6%)
Tagalog - 1.2 million + (Most Filipinos may also know other Philippine languages, e.g. Ilokano, Pangasinan, Bikol languages, and Visayan languages) (0.6%)

Yeah, learning German or French would not be more useful. At least with Spanish, you have a helpful addition in retail.

Then again, it really depends on the location of the world you're working in. Have some maps (clicky click):

Map of Hispanics:

Now, as we can see, Hispanics tend to crowd around the lower part of US near Mexico, while there are barely any to the north. Now let's look at this:

Map of Germans

Germans tend to crowd around the middle-northern parts of the states.

Assuming that the maps are accurate, it would make no sense for me to learn Spanish if I live in the middle-northern part of the US, and no point for me to learn German if I live in the southwestern part of the US.

No they can't. German does not have the multitude of speakers Spanish has, German is not as easy as Spanish, and German does not have many of the advantages of Spanish.

This is how I picture it:

English-------Spanish----German

Notice how it takes longer for an English speaker not knowing Spanish to reach a good level in German than one who knows Spanish. Although technically English is closer related to German, being part of the Germanic family, English has lost a truckload of things German has (declensions, verb-final placement, etc.). As such, my argument doesn't apply to German, or French, or Chinese, or Italian.

It really depends on the person though... I know that there's a Caucasian with no Chinese background in one of our Chinese classes, and he has the best grade and is super fluent in the language. And there's an American-born-Chinese who's Chinese is so-so but her English is failing rapidly because she keeps on talking in Chinese.

The habits from studying Spanish will help you in learning Chinese? You'll have a slight advantage in having a better accent? You'll already have had experience with another language and so won't feel demotivated if Chinese doesn't come easily?

You can say the same other way though...

Are you speaking to Cubans or something? Most of the Spanish leaners I've spoken to over the 'net say that Spanish speakers are clear speakers (especially Columbians and Spaniards). In turn, many of the Mandarin learners I've spoken to say that they have difficulty hearing the tones because Chinese... speak fast.

I dunno. I was watching (not sure why) a Spanish game show and it was insane. I also have heard from my friends who are taking Spanish that Spanish is crazily fast.

It probably depends on the person again. Some may just be great at Spanish for seemingly no reason at all, while others may feel that Chinese is easy.

I wasn't arguing just that Spanish is useful; I was arguing that it's a good starting point for getting into other languages as well because Spanish is practically a "Foreign language for dummies". French and the Chinese languages are harder to start and have a steeper learning curve.

It is a good starting point; that I agree. What I don't agree is making it mandatory, which is what the debate is (or should be) about.

Why do people call them dialects? :? They're not mutually intelligeble.

I don't know either. O.o

Question: Does Spanish from Spain sound different from Spanish from Mexico? Although they're both Spanish, they should have some differences since they've been separated for so long.

 

[Cyndaquil]

I don't think Spanish should be required, but I agree that they should require some language (especially below high school).

 

[Crazy Linoone]

Well, nobody here cuts trees on a regular basis, though trees in the suburbs are rather common, so it sounded like yet another "lolol hispanics do low labor" joke or something. Thanks for clearing it up.

:o Really sorry about that. I didn't realize that it sounded like a racist joke...

That sort of went with another point I made where you more likely to find a Chinese speaker who knows english.

We can't really prove or disprove this claim, but I suppose it's true that some Chinese are trying to learn English.

Well, Asia is a very diverse region. While almost all the languages of Europe are Indo-European (except for Estonian, Hungarian, Finnish, and maybe Basque and some other freaky languages), Asia is much bigger and Chinese isn't the gateway to, say, Thai, or Hindi. If you want to work in East Asia, though, then you'd be right.

That's true. Thai, Hindi, and more or less the Middle-Eastern seem to have another language category altogether, so I suppose if you want to work there, you'd need to learn some other language.

French is slightly harder for English speakers than Spanish and Spanish has numerous other advantages French doesn't have, at least for someone's first foreign language.

Well, since I haven't taken either of them, I can't really compare. We would need a study for

Ah, but does German have all the other lovely advantages of Spanish?

Well, my point was that making Spanish mandatory is sort of useless if your area is mostly German, since you'll use German more than Spanish.

There are trends, though. Some people absorb languages better than other, but in general most people have difficulty studying Chinese right off the bat.

True, true.

The further along in your language-studying you get, the clearer the words become unless it's French. When I first heard people speaking Russian, I was like "wtf kind of language is this", but now I can hear them much clearer.

Unless it's French...? :3 That line made me laugh.

I suppose it's the whole "practice makes perfect" thing. I don't know Spanish, so Spanish sounds like gibberish while your friends don't know Mandarin, so Mandarin sounds like gibberish.

but once again, there are trends. On "Which language is easier to learn?" lists, Spanish is almost universally placed at the bottom as either easy or easiest, and Chinese is usually on top as hardest or hard.
Edit: Wow, that ended up sounding like weird language porn between Chinese and Spanish. o_o

lol. French and German are pretty high on the list though; they also have a lot of similarities with English.

Spanish sounds different in each country. Latin Americans all have different Spanish accents, so you can tell an Argentinian from a Mexican from a Cuban, etc. Spanish from Spain is pretty far removed and even has a pronoun practically nobody else uses. It's like English.

Ahhh. I was just wondering whether a Mexican can understand a Spaniard.


Conclusion: Spanish is useful. Yes. It should be recommended. However, it should not be mandatory because there are other useful languages, too.

 

[opaltiger]

I find it very odd that you are arguing about which language is easiest or most useful for an English speaker to learn, when such things seem, to me, to be highly subjective. For example, I like German because its vocabulary is often similar to English; perhaps other people, who have less trouble broadening their vocabulary, would prefer a language with easier grammar.

 

[OrangeAipom]

(without reading the topic, really)

I'm not fond of the Spanish language - that's why I'm taking French.

¿De verdad? No me gustan letras mudas de francés. D: Ellos confundirían me. :(

I don't know much Spanish. I just used a dictionary.

 

[ultraviolet]

Coming from Australia I imagine it's probably different in the US, but here it's compulsory to learn one of two languages in primary school and then the start of high school, after which it's optional. The languages you can choose here are usually either an Asian (usually Indonesian, because we're really close to Indonesia, or Japanese/Chinese) or a European (Italian/French, usually) language. Personally, I didn't learn how to speak Italian at all after five years of repetitive, boring classes other than counting indefinitely and a few swear words, but most of the people who took Indonesian are really fluent in it and speak it frequently because Western Australia has a decent Indonesian population.
Honestly if the only reason why people don't want to learn a language is because they can't be bothered to then that's fine, but if you're going to deliberately be ignorant to an entire community of people just because you were raised speaking english then that is ridiculous. What is the point of purposely hindering your education? How useless are you going to be if there's an emergency and the only people around you don't speak English?

I mean the only reason why we don't teach Aboriginal dialects here is because they vary so much from region to region - in my area the local language is Nyoongar, but if I decided to drive say an hour or two North then the dialect is completely different. There's also little research into the languages and the amount of people who only speak an Aborginal dialect are extremely few, and/or aged.

 

[Fuzzlechan]

Okay, after reading the majority of this topic, I'm actually going to say something.

First of all, I'm from a place where learning a language other than English (AKA French) is mandatory up until the first year of high school. I've heard many people butcher the language, but it's come to the point where you can't get a job without knowing at least a little bit of French. Yes, French is the second language of Canada. But where I live, no one speaks it outside of classes. And even in class, they sound horrible. But we're forced to learn it anyway.

Spanish is, essentially, the second language of the US. And yes, I googled that. I think that it should be required from at least grade three up through the first year of high school, and then be optional after that. After that first year they should also provide other language courses, like German, French, Chinese, etc. And as for the people who are native English speakers and still can't say anything properly... enroll them in summer school and FORCE them to use proper grammar. PLEASE. It's as bad as using chatspeak.

 

[Crazy Linoone]

It'd be interesting if schools offered 'packages' depending on which part of the world students wanted to work.

That would be a great idea, actually. Although it would be hard to find all those teachers needed for the different languages.

I agreed with you that it shouldn't be mandatory in some regions. I'm not sure what to do with those regions, but I suppose someone who knows more than me on the language geography of the US could help.

We now officially agree with each other. The debate is over!

Freaking serious. Every line sounds like "bonjurjmappljeanejaimbcouplezamburgeois".

Practice does have a lot to do with it. I really wish schools here offered a wider variety of languages; Russian classes are non-existant here. The most foreign languages we can learn are Mandarin, Japanese, and Arabic. Know those and you can conquer the world~

They do... but then again so does Spanish.

My point is that French and German are on the same scale of usefulness as Spanish, so why not make them mandatory instead?

Unless they use CRAZY MAD slang, all Hispanophones can understand each other.

Coolio.

Maybe for certain regions it could be mandatory. As for other regions... it would require some specific studying of said regions. If there are no large quantities of non-English speakers there, then I suppose they could default to Spanish.

I think it should still be the student's choice though. A foreign language should be mandatory, but the students should still be able to take French or Mandarin or whatever if they want to, since

It's been said that the hardest language to learn is the one you dislike.

Spanish is, essentially, the second language of the US. And yes, I googled that. I think that it should be required from at least grade three up through the first year of high school, and then be optional after that. After that first year they should also provide other language courses, like German, French, Chinese, etc. And as for the people who are native English speakers and still can't say anything properly... enroll them in summer school and FORCE them to use proper grammar. PLEASE. It's as bad as using chatspeak.

Hm, but you didn't say why it should be mandatory -- you even admitted that Canadians in your area don't use French outside of school, which is the same case for foreign languages in the US -- people learn Spanish (or Mandarin or French or whatever) and don't use it outside of school. Also, wouldn't it be better to make people to learn English properly before trying to make them learn some other language? Instead of making them learn Spanish (or Mandarin or French or whatever), wouldn't it be better to spend that time teaching them proper English?

 

[Drowzee64]

I think that down here in states along the Mexican border, it would make tons of sense to require Spanish. Seriously, you can't go out without hearing/reading Spanish somewhere. Besides, growing up learning more than one language really helps you out when you try to learn another language. It helps you grasp the concept of different grammar systems and such.

 

[Lucas₇₅₅]

The arguments about how 'useful' Spanish is make some sense, but how many kids are actually going to use their foreign language outside of class anyway?