erinja:I have to say that I support making some kind of language compulsory.

Fascist... Why should people be forced to learn things they don't want to? It won't guarantee profiency and would put people off.

If people want to learn it, then they will. Let people keep it alive if they wish. Help provide them tools. But don't impose it on them! wtf?!

Not everyone enjoys dicking around in languages like all of you. Stop stating that everyone has to spend X of their time doing your favourite hobby because you said so (languages). School is an employee factory too much already with restriction and imposition of one-mode thought.

ceigered:what the heck do you want them to learn?

Creativity, skepticism, reasoning and learning. Teach a man to reason and he'll think for a lifetime.

Do you realise how massive the world is? It's not only language learning. Huge expanse of fields each with arrays of exciting cul-de-sacs.

Genjix:School is an employee factory too much already with restriction and imposition of one-mode thought.

Which is why we want them to learn more, not just the bare essentials for becoming good little employees/drones ;P

ceigered:what the heck do you want them to learn?

Creativity, skepticism, reasoning and learning. Teach a man to reason and he'll think for a lifetime.

Do you realise how massive the world is? It's not only language learning. Huge expanse of fields each with arrays of exciting cul-de-sacs.

Yeah, I'm a great fan of creative thinking, reasoning and a passion of learning. Skepticism, well, I don't think that needs to be taught, skepticism is essentially already part of us and is associated with the part of the brain that has a lot to do with "fear".

And of course the world's big and not only language learning. Does this look like a forum for learning about physics or chemistry or social science? ( ok, we all talk about that, but the point is that we here have our brains deep into languages, and thus we will promote the learning of them).

The idea of giving students freedom is nice and sound but (I can personally vouch for this) I don't think it's quite a smooth idea in practice. Children are little poops and need to be force fed information from a wide range of subjects when they fail to learn themselves. While I fervently hate the idea of turning schools into future employee factories, pedagogical anarchy will lead to underdevelopment, just as nowadays students are not being taught the essentials that you listed today.

Perhaps it is a cultural perception though, since coming from Australia, we often have a stereotype of the Chinese and Japanese as having superior education due to the fact they honestly get taught a lot more whether they like it or not. There may exist certain pressures in that environment which I don't think are nice to have, but extra education does noone harm.

Fascist... Why should people be forced to learn things they don't want to? It won't guarantee profiency and would put people off.

The general publics frequent reactions to science news in mainstream media is a good reason - you end up with a whole bunch of people cum self-proclaimed knowers of all thinking that a discovery is useless and that all scientists should go do something useful for society, without understanding how information is very often carefully and slowly accumulated rather than amazing findings suddenly occurring. People thinking they know everything about something they know nothing about is not a good thing IMHO

But Erinja, a fascist? I may have to rethink the meaning of life!

sudanglo:Would you have the teaching of Indian languages compulsory in America, just because they were indigenous. I don't think so.

If someone were to introduce a proposal to have compulsory teaching of native American languages in the US, I would support it.

Few Americans speak a foreign language, and many of our Native languages are at risk of extinction. I think that compulsory learning of a language (any language) is a positive thing, and it is a great idea to help revive our endangered indigenous languages. Most students will go through the motions and won't care, but some will care, and this will help maintain the viability of these languages.

I think that every single language is valuable for its own sake. Some languages are certainly more useful to learn than others but in my opinion, if you don't know a foreign language, then time you have spent learning a foreign language, any language, is not wasted. At a minimum it will help you learn the structures and grammar that underlie language, and make it easier to start learning a second foreign language.

Genjix:Why should people be forced to learn things they don't want to?

Because most children aren't capable of deciding what is valuable to know and what isn't. So adults choose for them.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I would have opted out of learning any math when I was a kid, if I were given the choice.

But that would have pretty much shut the door on becoming an engineer once I got older.

ceigered:Can Esperanto now be considered "useful" (that is, in the common sense of today that something's only useful if another country speaks it)?

This is pretty late news by almost a year and a half, but I like living in the past

I think not late. It still has value in it. At least i got the prove to tell the people in the street of my country. Thanks

erinja:

sudanglo:Would you have the teaching of Indian languages compulsory in America, just because they were indigenous. I don't think so.

If someone were to introduce a proposal to have compulsory teaching of native American languages in the US, I would support it.

Few Americans speak a foreign language, and many of our Native languages are at risk of extinction. I think that compulsory learning of a language (any language) is a positive thing, and it is a great idea to help revive our endangered indigenous languages. Most students will go through the motions and won't care, but some will care, and this will help maintain the viability of these languages.

I think that every single language is valuable for its own sake. Some languages are certainly more useful to learn than others but in my opinion, if you don't know a foreign language, then time you have spent learning a foreign language, any language, is not wasted. At a minimum it will help you learn the structures and grammar that underlie language, and make it easier to start learning a second foreign language.

Only whose mother tongue is lost would feel the pain. My mother tongue is lost due to the long history. I am 畲族（she zu) No language was left after Qing dynasty of killing and buring of scholars.

Why learn the imperialsm language as agree to Robert Philipson.

Thanks Erinja for the words of support

EoMy:Only whose mother tongue is lost would feel the pain. My mother tongue is lost due to the long history. I am 畲族（she zu) No language was left after Qing dynasty of killing and buring of scholars.

Why learn the imperialsm language as agree to Robert Philipson.

Thanks Erinja for the words of support

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_people

This people? There still seems to be speakers of a She language, nonetheless. Not sure if its the same, but that 畲 character seems to be the same in both cases anyway.

Alas, I cannot find substantial information about the language apart from what consonants it has, and "she language" on google comes up with very incorrect results.