BACK IN 2008, President Obama exclaimed at a town hall meeting, "I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!" That statement could go on a long list of things that have not changed since 2008. My point is not to criticize any one political party nor chide the United States for lacking a curriculum for languages in elementary school, but rather to examine why more students at the University do not take advantage of the wealth of language classes offered here.
Engineering students, Echols Scholars and individuals from schools with good Advanced Placement programs are particularly guilty of neglecting to drop in at Cabell Hall for a semester or two of multilingual learning. The blame lies not with these groups, however, but with their exemption from the College language requirement.
The Central Intelligence Agency estimates 4.83 percent of the world's 6,928,198,253 people speak English as their native language. I would like to know what kind of world-class engineer, or any scholar for that matter, is going to be designing solutions that do not have implications beyond that 4.83 percent of the world.
Since it is not easy to learn a language, would I be wrong to assume that the majority of students who are exempt from the language requirement and still are learning a foreign language have an inclination for grasping new languages? Waiving this requirement disadvantages Engineering students who may want to learn a language but are dissuaded by the fear of a low grade. Instead of pushing themselves, they will tend toward taking a class with which they are more comfortable, most likely in the Engineering School.
One may argue that taking just a few semesters of a language is pointless because chances are you will not learn all of the technical vocabulary you need to succeed in global trade. Yet picture this: You are stuck in some field in Africa, after having worked on bringing water to a village with the solar-powered pump your company designed. Your smartphone was stolen days ago, the translator went home early and you have got a Swahili map with directions back toward the village.
Luckily, however, you meet a man on the main road who speaks both Swahili and French. Thanks to the two semesters of French you unwrap from the depths of your college brain, you have a language bridge over which you can tiptoe back.
Now, I have taken economics and know that there is, of course, an opportunity cost associated with taking a language class. Is there an advantage to diversifying your array of talents by taking another language instead of an extra course in, say, computer science? Or is second-year Engineering student Kyle Teegarden correct in saying it is "far more useful to learn a programming language than a foreign language"?
I would argue that a foreign language is timeless, connects people with different personalities and interests, and imposes on you new ways of thinking. Take as an example the connection you can make with an employment scout by smiling and correctly guessing that her last name is of Lebanese descent. In this situation, I trust that having a rudimentary understanding of Arabic will be more memorable to the recruiter than taking another semester of a programming language that is guaranteed by Moore's Law to be obsolete in, at most, 20 years.
Taking a language at the University also is an experience that you will never get to have again. Buying Rosetta Stone right after reaching your midlife crisis and deciding to book a first-class ticket to Fiumicino is not going to teach you Italian.
Now is the time to take a foreign language class while your mind is still developing and you have the rest of your life to benefit from the increased awareness of another culture's customs, foods and geography. These are things you certainly will learn in any introductory language class, so do not miss the opportunity to dabble in another fraction of the world from which you can draw for the rest of your life.
Andrew Kouri is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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