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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are overseas and FL is required in yrs 7 and 8, which DC has done. He is dropping it so that he can keep fine art (his favorite) and econ/commerce (likely focus in college) as his electives in addition to the core academic classes. There just was not room for FL, unless he gave up his favorite subject or his intended college major.

If all of the US schools tell him to go pound sand, so be it. Now that we are out of the US, I see how crazy we make our kids by forcing them to study to jump through some hoop for no reason other than the puppet master in the admissions office put up a hoop.

I have no idea if he will be offered a path to return home for college without a foreign language. But he will be worldly and well educated. And he will know his parents supported him in pursuing his genuine interests in a world where choices must be made.

If FL is your jam, awesome. If not, language barriers will not stop you from succeeding in life. They have this new thing. It’s called AI…

Sorry for the sarcasm. I’m frustrated. I’m not educating my child for some storied era of yore. He can go to college in England or Australia if need be. People study with a focus there. Good grief.

[/quote]

Language isn't about translating: it's about trying to understand the way that another culture, whether past or present, views the world.  It's no less practical than trying to understand the way that the world is organized by studying mathematics - and no easier, either.

I agree that it can be hard watching DCs be required to take courses in something they don't care about when there are other things they care about more.  My own DC is disappointed that they _don't_ have time for language right now and worried that they will be starting too late (alas, yes, my DC, you will be behind - here in the US we start languages so very late that we deprive most students of the opportunity to progress to anything fun or achieve any degree of real proficiency).

But please know that being able to feed a conversation through an AI app is not the same as trying to communicate with a human being or read a poem in its original language or understand why a song uses exactly _those_ words and no others - any more than being able to run some figures on a calculator is the same as being able to understand a complex mathematical proof.  There is glorious complexity to both.[/quote]

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