To begin with, I have never really understood the fascination that some have with language training. Here in the SOF community we have been dealing with that mess for years. It is not all that it is cracked up to be. In order for language training to be truly useful it is very time intensive, more time than most leaders can afford to spend on it. A few words are nice to know for certain situations but that isn't going to cut it for anything complex and may even be counter-productive. Nothing will beat having a good terp and I realize that there are not enough of those to go around but I really don't believe that spending the time and resources to bring squad leaders up to the kind of proficiency that is needed to have any sort of meaningful dialog in the absence of a terp is going to pay off.

As for trying to push language down to K-12, well I will be happy if they can consistently start teaching our children to read and write in English, never mind a foreign language. Besides, as Steve pointed out, you aren't going to get much in the way of variety in these language programs. I went to a private school where we had a relatively robust language program, meaning we had German, French and Latin. My family is in Pueblo Colorado now and the only language that is taught in any of the public schools there, as far as I know, is Spanish. None of that is really going to be all that useful. Latin is useless, German won't help unless the Germans start feeling froggy again , French may have some utility in Africa and I don't think that the military has ever suffered a shortage of Spanish speakers. Language programs tend to be the first thing to get cut out of the budget when it comes time to tighten the budgetary belt. Trying to get schools to ADD language programs, particularly in languages that are very difficult like Arabic or Chinese is probably a bridge to far, and that's assuming that sufficient instructors in those languages could be found.

SFC W