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Washington May Count CS As Foreign Language For College Admission
theodp writes On Wednesday, Washington State held a public hearing on House Bill 1445, which proposes a study "to allow two years of computer sciences to count as two years of world languages for the purposes of admission into a four-year institution of higher education." Among the questions posed by the House Higher Education Committee to a UW rep at the hearing was the following: "What's the case for...not just world language is good, world language is well-rounded, but world language is so super-duper-duper good that you should spend two years of your life doing them and specifically better than something else like coding?" The promise of programming jobs, promoted by Microsoft execs and other MS folks like ex-Program Manager Audrey Sniezek (ironically laid off last summer), has prompted Kentucky to ponder a similar measure.
CS is about rationally mathematically describing a step by step algorithm , foreign language is about getting to communicate with human , foreign cultures, and getting a bit outside your own cocoon. They are not for the same purpose and practically have nothing to do to each others. Making such equivalence make no sense to me.
Or two years of an actual foreign language. There have been studies that show that learning a foreign language helps programmers program better and read code better.
But realistically, taking two years of a foreign language in high school isn't going to be enough for most people to strike up with conversations people in that language. That's not to say you can't learn a language to fluency in two years - just that you'll need to put in more that a couple of hours per week.
I agree that coding is very different from learning a foreign language, but I do think that the question in the summary makes a valid point. Why is learning a foreign language so important that we should dedicate 4 semesters to it (especially when most people don't learn it to the point where it could become directly useful in their daily lives)? IMO, coding brings up the same question - how useful will 2 years of programming classes be for the average non-programmer?
While I wouldn't equate learning a programming language with learning a foreign language, it doesn't seem unreasonable to allow students to replace once class of questionable usefulness with another class of questionable usefulness.
Interesting point, but most German engineers are going to speak English better than you can speak German. I imagine the same is true for Japan. The advantage of Spanish (or what people realize less often, French) is that you have large poorer territories in South America and especially Africa where perhaps there'd be more difficulty getting someone with US tech experience to head up an office.
This is primarily a question of how much we value general education though. People forget the main reason to learn a second language is just an exercise in learning and seeing how another language works. Most people are never going to speak a second language well enough to use it professionally. People who want a university education should still have to have a well-rounded education even if they're majoring in CS. That means learning some history and foreign language.
Why is learning a foreign language so important that we should dedicate 4 semesters to it (especially when most people don't learn it to the point where it could become directly useful in their daily lives)?
At the very least, it lets you appreciate the struggle that others face when they speak your language as a second language.
One of the major goals of education is the development of an appreciation of the condition of others on many levels -- not just social, but cultural, geographical, historical, technological... and linguistic. You won't necessarily become an expert on the differences we all have, but you do learn that we are different, and to appreciate it.
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