Lex Anteinternet: What's Wrong with the United States? Cultural and linguistic ignorance.

Lex Anteinternet: What's Wrong with the United States? We're really...: Can you imagine this scene today?  The older man (who in context is probably in his 50s) would be staring blankly into space, while the youn...

Let's revisit this topic just a bit.

I went to university in the 1980s.  Prior to entering university it was emphasized to me that I'd need to learn a foreign language.  I checked it out, and that was in fact quite correct. The courses of study I was looking at, which were scientific in nature, all required foreign languages in order to graduate.

In junior high I took French.  The options were French, Latin, or Spanish.  French was my choice as my mother spoke French and I had a cultural connection to it.  In high school I took German, as my father knew it and I had a cultural connection to it.  In university, as a science major, I took German.  Two semesters of basic German and one of German literature, in German.  I.e., the whole class was taught in German.

It's not too much to ask.

I've never regretted a moment I've dedicated to languages outside of the mother tongue.

My father took German in university and already spoke it and Latin.  My mother majored in French, which she already knew how to speak, but she knew Latin as well.

A century ago a university student wouldn't have made it out of university without a command of Latin and Greek.

For that matter, a university student, no matter what they would have taken, would have had a familiarity with the Middle English classics.

These things are not unimportant.  Part of the reason we are in the fix we are today is that the occupant of the Oval Office speaks gibberish, like an uneducated moron.  Many Americans who are ostensibly well educated cannot get by, even in a rudimentary fashion, in a foreign tongue.  In this regard, the average illegal immigrant from south of the border is much better educated linguistically and culturally than the average American.

Exposure to a foreign language, even if you forget it, is illuminating as the culture of the language will come to you to some degree.  This presents a strong argument for Latin returning as a requirement for university, as we're all latent residents of the Roman Empire and don't know it, through its culture.  Electing a Presiden twho speaks GibberyDoo is good evidence of how far we've fallen. Like the Vandals smashing the mosaics to see if the animals were trapped in the floor, we're smashing the country and the culture as we're equally ignorant.

That can be stopped, and should be.