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Oh. I couldn't tell you exactly. Legolas Send a noteboard - 28/09/2015 08:39:53 PM

View original postBecause you mentioned some schools, representative of America on the whole or not, which seemed to jibe more with my experience than with what the others have said. RT is older than I am, but I think Tom and Cannoli are a few years younger. And so I'm curious about what you've seen. What are the influencing factors when it comes to national region, urban-suburban-rural divide, local ethnic demographics, decade, and local employers. As to the last there, I have no doubt the business done with Japan ( via the port of Seattle but mostly Boeing) led to the introduction of Japanese classes at my school. My teacher said something like a dozen schools in the whole of America offered it at that time.

I couldn't tell you precisely what schools, nor precisely what languages they offer - this is not personal experience, it's what I hear about from American friends or people on this board, read about in newspapers, etc. Japanese is indeed unusual, but I've heard of schools offering Chinese before, alongside the more classical choices of Spanish, French, German, Latin. One assumes some high schools in particular locations would offer less obvious choices (though I've yet to hear of one offering e.g. Arabic).

Of course, the problem with Chinese, Japanese or even to a lesser extent Arabic is that if you don't put a hell of a lot of effort into them, probably more than one could reasonably expect from a HS student, even the equivalent of Tom's example "yo quiero Taco Bell" would be beyond you. I'm not sure there's much point in teaching those languages on a HS level.

For me as a Belgian this is all rather odd - we have far more language classes, but much less choice in the matter, so chance doesn't play much of a role in what languages you learn and even personal choices only go so far, unlike stories like Cannoli's.

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I don't understand education priorities - 22/09/2015 04:21:44 AM 900 Views
The nation is falling apart due to stupidity - 22/09/2015 02:57:18 PM 674 Views
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Accelerated Reader! - 22/09/2015 08:37:33 PM 651 Views
Re: Accelerated Reader! - 23/09/2015 01:18:37 AM 728 Views
It doesn't necessarily follow that education is getting worse, though. - 22/09/2015 06:22:31 PM 719 Views
But it has. College is now teaching what high school should have. - 22/09/2015 09:00:20 PM 808 Views
I'll take your word for that, but... - 22/09/2015 11:02:28 PM 655 Views
Re: It doesn't necessarily follow that education is getting worse, though. - 23/09/2015 02:03:03 AM 609 Views
To some extent - not entirely - it's just that the ideas of general knowledge were different. - 23/09/2015 06:25:36 PM 687 Views
You keep making this error in your logic. - 23/09/2015 07:44:00 PM 599 Views
Johnny can't read is hardly new - 28/09/2015 05:25:29 PM 621 Views
It's more symptomatic, IMO - 26/09/2015 05:49:12 PM 618 Views
We agree on most things, then. Good. - 26/09/2015 11:09:40 PM 552 Views
German? - 27/09/2015 03:21:51 PM 615 Views
Do you have the full statistics? That'd be interesting. - 27/09/2015 04:59:40 PM 576 Views
Can you list those language choices? - 28/09/2015 07:21:37 AM 657 Views
Wait, who is that a question to? - 28/09/2015 06:38:20 PM 592 Views
You. - 28/09/2015 08:05:54 PM 757 Views
Oh. I couldn't tell you exactly. - 28/09/2015 08:39:53 PM 625 Views
My local High School only offers Spanish and French - 28/09/2015 05:34:27 PM 577 Views
Indeed. - 27/09/2015 11:41:07 PM 549 Views
My experience is similar. - 02/10/2015 09:14:58 PM 561 Views
That 43% is another BS survey result - 28/09/2015 04:36:51 PM 608 Views

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