Learning a Second Language

1. It is important to note that a major part of school is learning information that will better your ability to survive on your own in the world. What this all comes down to is the difference between excess information and necessary information; teachers will be given certain curriculum that they must fulfill in each course, and will be expected to manage their time by lesson planning to fit the 180 days of school. Classes like math, language arts, science and history are often recognized as imperative to human academic growth and thus become part of 'core education' [common core]. This concept essentially mandates the enrollment of certainly classes upon students, making them graduate requirements. This, however, is detrimental to a student's ability to learn. While Pro has not given a specific "student" age group, it is assumable they mean middle school or high school level education. If this is the case, this is piling on more work and more attention-seeking activity to an already overwhelming stack of classes that come with inherent classwork, homework and major assessments. Therefore it is logical to conclude that making it manditory to take a second language, plus math, science, language arts, history and gym/some form of physical education or activity would be will overwhelming to the students at hand. I would like to introduce a quote to make people think about this:"If no teacher can teach every subject, why then must a student learn every subject? " - this is quite literally the most true statement regarding education I have ever read: no teacher may teach every subject because the burden of how much time, effort and strenuous hours of absboring oneself in work that would take would be an atrocious amount. So why are 6 or 7 core aspects of edcucational careers core and mandated?2. Making the learning of a second language mandatory in an educational facility is also an enormous waste of time and money. According to an article posted by econlog, only 7% of students that were part of a conducted study actually spoke their learned second language in school or put it to use on a regular basis. Another detail of information from the same article and the same study, stated that only 1/100 of students taking language courses were likely to attain fluency by the end of their mandated two-year learning course. What is the point of forcing students to invest 2 years of their time in school to achieve knowledge within the boundaries of a foreign language, if they aren't going to learn the full language within that span of time, and they aren't going to be able to put it to good use because of that? An article from the thinktank rationalconspiracy also spoke out on the issue, saying: "26% of Americans can speak a language other than English well enough to hold a conversation. " Clearly a very small minority of people in America can actually fluidly speak a second language, therefore not supporting the claim that it somehow puts to use the idea that it can improve life in any way. There is also the fact that people who study in college for many years language arts of foreign languages would suddenly become useful, because their ability to translate and communicate where others can't in foreign languages is nullified by the fact that now most people can. However, the article also cites the U. S Census, saying that, "18% of Americans speaking a language other than English at home", doing some subtraction, the author deduced that only 8% of Americans would therefore apply the knowledge of the language course to everyday life; once again nullifying its use in the outside world. But yet, 90% of high school students had, at one point, taken a language. Many seem to fail in applying it empirically. Sources. [1] . http://econlog.econlib.org...[2] . http://rationalconspiracy.com...I