View Single Post
Old 02-12-2014, 04:56 PM  
kane
Too lazy to set a custom title
 
kane's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: portland, OR
Posts: 20,684
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie View Post
That's kinda what I meant in my first post....we are "dumbed down" not unintelligent.

We should be REQUIRED to learn Spanish, French, Russian, Dutch, German, etc. from the time we are in kindergarten or pre-school.

I know we all took a little French or Spanish as a high school elective, but it's not good enough.

We should be fluent in a few different languages by the time we are 10 years old.

But instead, we have politicians screaming "English Only". And trying to build a freakin' border "wall" (instead of just stopping the war on drugs entirely). And we are kept ignorant by our news media for damn sure.

I'm too damn old now to learn another language. It would have been easy to do it when I was young (kids have minds like sponges at the time of their life).

But at least I can now watch Al Jazeera America and get news events from around the world.

Seems that CNN only reports stupid shit from foreign countries (like the French sex scandal) that don't really mean anything.

I hope that in the near future we change our attitude and open our minds here in the U.S.

Otherwise, we are going to fall far behind the rest of the world.

When this country started, it was envisioned by learned men who were world-wise.
They all spoke several languages, knew what was going on in the world, and were men of science...NOT religion.

There isn't any reason that in the year 2014, the average American can only speak English. And has never traveled out of their own state....much less country. And we aren't given any pertinent information about what is going on in the world.

Just look at 9-11.
Most of us were shocked! We had no idea WHY anybody would hate our country.

I guess that's the way our govt. likes to keep us: Ignorant of the shit they are doing around the world.
The education system in this country needs a full reboot. I agree, all kids should learn other languages. Whether we want it or not, today's kids are citizens of the world. With the internet and travel as modernized as it is many companies are now multi-national so knowing a second or third language will better prepare people to be competitive in today's marketplace.

Like you say, our leaders are hellbent on keeping us in the past. During the last election Rick Santorum was actually calling people with a college degree stuck up and praising those who chose to work hard instead of going to school (of course both he and his wife have law degrees). I have a friend who is completely pissed off about ATM machines offering multiple languages. I mock him about that being the thing he thinks is the major problem with this country. When you go to many other countries you see tons of signs in multiple languages and menus in multiple languages. It is just part of the culture yet here we freak out about it.

To me one of the dumb things we do in America is that we are often proud of our ignorance and that is sad.
kane is offline   Share thread on Digg Share thread on Twitter Share thread on Reddit Share thread on Facebook Reply With Quote