As many great scholars know, “knowledge is power”. When it comes to language and culture, it is more than facts that we learn; we also learn of a different lifestyle and customs apart from our habitual routine. Practicing focus on another country is a way of giving importance to our neighbors around the world. Acknowledging that there are different kinds of people in the world, this broadens our minds about humanity. In a way, it is like opening a door to a mansion filled with 100 more doors that we inevitably open. It is just right that we become curious and would want to know answers, because we cannot remain ignorant about global issues.
I definitely think and agree that college students should require foreign language in order to graduate. There are beauty and many great lessons upon learning about other countries. The foreign language, if taken with great regards, can take a person far from its idioms but to open his/her eyes to a dissimilar perceptive. It teaches its students about finding common grounds with an entirely differing belief system –or vice versa. To clarify myself, in order to understand a foreign language (let’s say Japanese), you have to constantly translate words from English to Jap then Jap to English to get used to the expression. From there, the student will begin looking at things using Japanese words or descriptions; he/she begins to think as Japanese.
In learning a foreign language, we also learn of a foreign history or history from a foreign point of view. Knowing about a distant culture shrinks or breaks down language barriers. Although there are over trillion people living on earth, we are all living in one planet. What is happening on the opposite end of the ball park would very much affect the entire park –may it be good or bad; what happens to a local park would very much affect the entire community; within that community, a city would be affected and so on. With that said a college student cannot possibly remain unaffected when he hears that there is war in Libya and mass murders take place every day. Although it is imaginary for a mere Spanish lecture to immediately take effect on a student to care about Spanish speaking people (or at least the Spanish living in Spain), the broader that student’s culture becomes, the more he can relate to global issues. Relation is the key to change; it is the initiation for people to care about other people.
It is important for a person to have a global awareness in prior to making a big difference in the world. It cannot always be about one culture and one belief system. As part of the human species, we have to watch out for each other –regardless the ethnicity— to survive and grow. We learn from each other and use each other as support system. We cannot simply judge other cultures or enthnicity without knowing where they're coming from. Perhaps knowing about the French culture or the Chinese, would elaborate on their way of being. Perhaps knowing that much would allow us to understand and stop judging. Threfore, taking a foreign language is definitely worth it and should be required upon graduating.
You made a good argument for the importance of learning a foreign language in college and backed up your beliefs well. It is true that what happens on the other side of the world will affect us in one way or another. The uprisings in the Middle East are affecting every American with gas prices for a simple example. It gives the oil companies an excuse to raise the price of gas and because of that, I am trying to drive less and ride my bike more. I agree that in learning a language you also learn about a people’s culture and about the way they think. Americans often judge people’s ways in other parts of the world, but they are in a completely different society. I liked what you said at the end, that knowing about different cultures and people’s way of existing will allow us to understand them rather than judge them. Everyone does not have the same way of thinking, the same values, the same beliefs. When we do not understand a person or group of people we do often judge them because they are not like us. I find the diversity of cultures fascinating, it flavors our world.
ReplyDelete