Language and Education

This is the breakdown of the most commonly spoken languages by number of people who speak it:

1. Chinese (937,132,000)
2. Spanish (332,000,000)
3. English (322,000,000)
4. Bengali (189,000,000)
5. Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
6. Arabic (174,950,000)
7. Portuguese (170,000,000)
8. Russian (170,000,000)
9. Japanese (125,000,000)
10. German (98,000,000)
11. French (79,572,000)

Languages in blue are the ones most commonly taught in Fairfax County Public Schools, that glowing example of an educational system.  The language in red is clearly the one we treat as the official language of America, even if it's not officially official yet.

I'd like to pose the question, why aren't public schools teaching the most widely spoken language in the world? Or languages?  Why is it that the languages we have to pick from, other than Spanish, barely rank on the list?

Now, "most widely spoken" is a bit hard to define. Above, the numbers represent the population of native speakers.  You could argue that Chinese is "winning" because there are so many dialects of Chinese and there are just so many people in China.  Well, that's true.  There are also many different dialects of English (no one could win an argument trying to say that British English and American English are the same).  


Moreover, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish are the official languages of the UN.  But three of these are rarely taught in public schools.  These are arguably the most influential languages, and yet american children have no clue.

French schools happen to introduce a foreign language to students in elementary school, and some lucky students here in Herndon had that opportunity through the immersion program.  The difference is, all but one of the immersion students in my grade has since dropped French.  And compared to Chinese, French is pretty darn easy.


Personally, I love languages and I'm pretty sure I'm biased in this regard, but American schools need to place more emphasis on language education. I'm currently in AP French and am learning Arabic through a tutor (it's awesome btw).  I especially don't understand why Arabic isn't more common in the classroom.  During the Cold War, Russian became very popular because of rivalry with the USSR.  And now, if you know Arabic, you are almost guaranteed a job in the government.  Yet it's still not commonly taught.


On a broader scope of things, America does not place enough emphasis on our education system in general.  Our teachers are under paid.  Our schools are not in good condition.  Standardized tests keep the standards low enough so anyone can pass, but not everyone does.  Teachers teach to the test, and still not everyone passes.  When budget cut decisions are made, teachers get fired and school funding is cut. 

Singapore's school system hires teachers from the top third of their class; in America, teachers are not always in the top fifty.  Singapore's teachers are more highly paid.  Singaporean students score higher on international tests.  Basically, we should aim to be more like Singapore.  We can't really afford to half-ass our "investment" in our future.