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Comment by ht_th | Hacker News Reader

I did learn to read, write, listen, and speak three foreign languages in high school. Beyond learning vocabulary, there was not much memorizing going on. I still use two of these foreign languages regularly!

I would rather we fix foreign language education rather than just cut it. Besides, why not teach parts of these "life lessons" during foreign language class? Might be interesting to compare home economics in different cultures.

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I also took 3 compulsory foreign language classes and retained maybe 30 words after the exams. I hated it and treated it as a memorization problem. It was a complete waste of my time due to a lack of interest. I don't think you could have fixed it for someone like me. The root problem was my disinterest in learning another language which I don't think is going to change with a different pedagogy. I'm just simply not interested in the prospect of learning that content, and trying to get that content into my brain was a matter of great subjective displeasure.

That's why it should be opt-in. The people that are capable of getting value from it (you) join in and the people guaranteed to get no value due to a lack of interest (me) can do something else.

The same thing shouldn't apply to critical/foundational classes like basic math. But foreign languages aren't that.

I'd say it shows the weakness of the teaching system, if you can pass by just memorizing. I guess standardized tests are to be blamed for that. In a decent foreign language class, treating it as a memorization excercize should let you fail. And in my experience it did.

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