9/19: Code, the language of the future?

This week, let's talk about the future of language education, especially for high school students. In the United States, only ten states strictly require foreign language courses to graduate with a public high school diploma. In contrast, most European countries require students to learn one, if not two, languages in school. And in the past several years, many US state governments have passed legislation that allows computer programming coursework as a replacement for language learning requirements. After all, students do learn a type of language in coding classes - just one that is meant to be spoken only with a machine.

The question of whether learning to program is an acceptable - or even superior - alternative to foreign language learning has strong proponents on both sides. Those in favor of a coding education point to the plethora of software and programming jobs that span almost every industry, and argue that the practicality of programming outweighs that of a new language. Those in favor of preserving high school language learning emphasize the creativity, empathy, communication and cognition skills nurtured by a second language education.

As the aforementioned data from public school systems demonstrates, the idea that just one language is sufficient is a highly American one. It's part of a worldview that also believes machine translation has made human translation obsolete, a worldview that places little inherent value in the diversity of expression and understanding possible for students of multiple languages.

That said, the practical reality of programming skills isn't going to disappear any time soon. (In 2020, Brown graduated 297 Computer Science concentrators, the most commonly chosen area of study.) But since countless studies suggest that language learning is most effective at a younger age, perhaps if we must choose between a human language or a computer language for high school students, we should start with the human one - the computer will still be waiting when they get there.

For more, check out this roundup about the topic from the ACTFL and these responses to a WSJ piece advocating for computer science to replace language learning.