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Comment by pvnick | Hacker News Reader

I frequently disagree with the president, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one. I've been saying for a while now, if we were to replace high school and college foreign language requirements with a computer programming language class, you would propel America way ahead of everyone else (more-so than now) in terms of industry and innovation, and do wonders for the economy, all within a decade.

Think about it. Teachers, scientists, psychologists, poly sci majors, doctors, all with basic computer programming abilities. With the ability to build efficiency into their work. That would be so immensely powerful, the investment would be untold dividends. Way more than memorizing spanish vocab for a grade and then forgetting it.

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There are a couple of assumptions built into your proposal that I would want to see some data to support:

1: Computer programming competes with foreign languages in high schools and colleges.

2: The economic value of programming languages is greater than the economic value of foreign languages.

Your last sentence also suggests you are comparing apples and oranges, a grade of a foreign language that is dropped against achieving basic computer programming abilities. These are not the same level of achievement.

I think understanding computation is a key 21st century skill that we would do well to invest in but I think foreign languages also have value.

1) I don't know what country you're from, but in America here is how it works: In general, competitive colleges require at least two years of foreign language classes in high school. Stanford would like to see three or more years, and Harvard urges applicants to take four years.

When a college recommends "two or more" years of a language, they are clearly signaling that language study beyond two years would strengthen your application. No matter where you apply for college, a demonstrated proficiency in a second language will strengthen your application.

Students who have just the minimum can win admission if their applications demonstrate strengths in other areas. Some less competitive schools don't even have a high school language requirement and assume some students will simply study a language once they get to college.

If you score a 4 or 5 on an AP (advanced placement) language exam, most colleges will consider that evidence of adequate high school foreign language preparation (and you're likely to get course credit in college).

2) Foreign language requirements are originally a product of enlightenment era education curriculum and have been kept afloat with notions that in a globalizing economy candidates who can work internationally will garner higher wages and be more productive. This is true, to a degree, but wouldn't you rather work for a Swedish web design firm from your US based coffee shop?

US universities should really ditch the general language requirements and leave it up to the college or department within the college to decide whether it would even be useful.

Air traffic controllers and software programmers only need to know English. Business students intending to work for a multinational need at least one more language, and they should be from this list: Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, or Standard Arabic.

The vast majority of graduates of US universities who are from the US will never need a second language other than Spanish, and they won't even need to know it all that well.

I still don't see that dropping the foreign language requirement would immediately lead to an increased take up of programming languages. I don't understand why foreign languages are what should be dropped.

If there is limited time for learning and there is no space for programming then any changes should be discussed in light of the full current curriculum. The original post suggested that foreign languages should be dropped in favor of programming languages, there may be other subjects of the curriculum that could be dropped instead, especially if the yardstick of economic value is the measure to be used.

In the US, meeting the foreign language requirement doesn't require actually learning a foreign language. I know many people who took the obligatory college prep Spanish who can't respond to "Buenos días." This is a better argument for improving foreign language education, though, than replacing it with computer language education. And, frankly, if the latter were taught as poorly as the former, it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

I don't think I was being clear. My point about apples and oranges was based on the view that if the programming languages achievements were as limited as the described foreign language achievements then not much would have been gained.

> I've been saying for a while now, if we were to replace high school and college foreign language requirements with a computer programming language class

Computer programming has absolutely nothing to do with learning a foreign language. Learning a foreign language provides excellent perspective on your own, leading to a much greater understanding of grammar.

I took four years of Spanish and it's the only thing that made the endless, repetitive English lessons finally 'click'. For the record, I also took four years of programming and passed both CS AP exams (not that it mattered, since at the time colleges wouldn't acknowledge it b/c it was taught in Pascal and everyone wanted C -- yes, they were really that dumb).

Learning a foreign language provides critical insight into language. Learning to program provides critical insight into how to break problems down and how to structure a solution. Both are valuable and dissimilar.

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