I read with considerable disappointment Adam Seston's opinion piece on ""Language credits an unnecessary hassle,"" in The Daily Cardinal last Wednesday. Let's put aside the issue of when UW-Madison students should fulfill their language requirements and focus on what was most troubling about the essay.
Mr. Seston argues that taking a foreign language in college is a waste of time, that it is ""neither practical nor aspiring to many students, as many will likely never use it again."" I'm curious to know how he came to that conclusion.
Knowledge of a foreign language, along with a study-abroad or international internship experience and international studies courses, is a basic component of what educators call global competence, or global literacy.
All across the nation, educators, leaders of educational organizations, corporate CEOs and other business leaders agree that today's students will need to be globally competent to succeed in an increasingly international economy and multicultural world.
Language study provides insight into the way particular cultures view the world. Students who assume English is the world's lingua franca and that it will carry them in their careers and their travels do so at their peril. Our graduates will be working in global teams both here and abroad where knowledge of a foreign language and the ability, through language training, to relate to people of different cultures and backgrounds, will be essential.
From both an economic and national security point of view, Americans will need a much wider skill set in less commonly taught languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Chinese and Korean, to name just a few. UW-Madison offers instruction in more than 60 languages, an achievement few other universities around the world can claim.
Increasingly, university students around the world are speaking not one, but three languages, including their own. American undergraduates will be challenged to do the same in the 21st century.
Mr. Seston says ""it's presumptuous to expect students to gain anything from a class they have virtually no interest in."" I'm sorry if this has been his experience, especially given that so many other students on this campus have found language classes personally and professionally rewarding and exciting.
Gilles Bousquet
Dean of International Studies
