Letter: Foreign language in high schools is worthwhile

In an April 22 column, "Why waste time on a foreign language?," Jay Mathews lazily defends those who attack high school foreign language courses by giving little more than personal anecdotes to prove his theory that "there is little evidence that many students achieve much fluency in high school."

The untenable nature of Mathews's evidence aside (so what if he went to a party once with a presidential aide who seemed indifferent to practicing Latin?), when did total fluency become the ultimate test of worthiness for two years of high school foreign language? I took two years of biology in secondary school and couldn't today tell you the difference between meiosis and mitosis without a little help from Google, yet no one's arguing that studying cellular processes is a waste of precious school resources. Rather than delving further into life science, I focused on four years of French followed by four more at university, and only then did I achieve some measure of fluency. But that doesn't make those first two years of study useless.

In addition to its many cognitive benefits, foreign language learning helps students get into a good college, where they can continue with their study, work toward fluency and thereby become a more desirable job candidate in an increasingly global marketplace. In other words, laying a foundation for further study and broadening one's cultural horizons in the process are never a waste of time, even if methods of instruction can and should be improved.

Kate Sommers-Dawes

assistant editor,

Language Magazine,

Topanga, Calif.