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Je ne comprends pas

Posted by Andrew Mernin on October 10, 2007 9:40 AM | 

I read a report last week that said one in ten adults are now learning a foreign language to go and work overseas. But what I often wonder is why those at the top of the UK schools system over the last two generations didn't consider the future business climate when coming up with the language curriculum.

Surely 20 to 30 years ago, the powers that be must have realised that the Chinese, Indian and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern economies were going to boom in the coming decades. So why weren't languages like Arabic, Hindi or Chinese more commonplace in classroom timetables across the country?

If they had been perhaps we would see more businesses from the region taking advantage of the many opportunities in thriving cities such as Beijing, Mumbai or Riyadh.

Of course some would say classroom timetables have more to take into consideration than business and without French, German or Italian lessons at school we wouldn't be able to go to Europe and ask for a ham sandwich and a can of coke or tell exchange students what we did last weekend. But surely more languages on the curriculum from the booming economies would have put us in good stead today.

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