My first year at this university the department had an ice cream social for incoming freshmen at one of the parks in town and they sent one of the sophomores who was a native to show me how to drive there. I think they picked him to go with me because I had been to Egypt and traveled a lot. Almost before we got in the car, he told me that his fantasy job was to take photographs for National Geographic. I knew of someone who had done a project that had a NG photographer on it, and so we talked about that and he told me about wanting to travel the world and see all sorts of fantastic things. I certainly could sympathize. That is pretty much how I picked my graduate school career -- I figured I could make more money doing something else, but not necessarily have an excuse to travel to exotic places (which at the time included Egypt).
I saw the student a couple of times in my classes and even after he graduated. But I didn't have much of a conversation with him over the next few years. After graduation we as a department looked at the letters students wrote to the department and university, as usual in those days. The letters were to answer questions such as what was your best experience, what do you most want to change about your program, in what ways did the liberal arts interact with your major, etc. . His letter I don't remember much about except for the comment he had about the core curriculum requirement to have two years of language instruction, or language proficiency at the intermediate level. This student who had so much wanted to see the world probably said something like "I liked most of the undergraduate education I got here, except I didn't get the point of the language requirement." It was at least 15 years ago, so I don't know what exactly the phrasing was, but I do remember my disappointment that his time in college had made him less interested in the world beyond his home town, that in the final analysis, he had not seen the value in learning how to speak with someone who did not come from the same culture that he did.
At our university the difference between a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science degree includes the requirement of language study. While everyone has to have the equivalent (at least) of elementary proficiency, or a single full year of language at the college level, the BA (and BFA) students have to do two years. Many, of course, do more than that. My students who want to go on in Art History beyond the BA are encouraged to gain reading knowledge in at least two languages -- usually French and German (of course, these are beyond English), but potentially Spanish or Italian, depending on the area they want to study in graduate school. I know that some people don't do well in languages and find it hard to really get excited about the fact they will have to take all those semesters of classes. I am not good at languages myself. I had German and French (including a summer class in French for reading knowledge at another university) for two years each as an undergrad (in addition to barely squeeking by with a D in one semester of Baby Greek), and three years of ancient language at the graduate level (it was a required first minor for my archaeology program). Every step was painful. And I know the horror my students feel when I talk with them about it. But I also know how useful these have all been for me, including the Greek and the four semesters of Russian I did in high school along with my German. And I wish I had done Latin and gotten up my gumption to return to Greek.
Speech is the way you interact with the world. It is not just travel that requires knowing foreign languages. It is something that, scared as some people are, is essential for navigating even the United States. Not just Spanish, but Chinese and other Asian languages can be useful for local navigation. And the world gets more interesting when you can understand what it is saying -- on YouTube, in other places on the internets (Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, and AFP all provide good coverage of the Middle East which you may be able to get in English, but even when you can it is being filtered in a way that may reflect bias on the part of the ones who are telling the stories), and the best films in the world -- a menu may have words in foreign languages, the person serving you behind the counter of the shop may not be a native speaker of English, and that cute guy or girl at the bar may not be a native speaker either. What do you do? Give up?
And there is the scholarship that is opened up when you don't have to use a translator to access it. The friends that you can make. The movies that you can finally understand (captions leave off things, and dubbing is just annoying, even when done well and done by the actors who did the original). The travel you can do. Is this a bad thing, to have the world open for you? I can't imagine how sad the world would be without this. And the student I opened up talking about wanted the world closed off to him. I am glad that, annoyed as he was with the requirement, he still had to deal with it. I hope that someday he found out it was useful, somehow.
What do your students (both elementary and secondary as well as college level) say about language requirements? How do you convince them to take advantage of it? How do you manage more than "It is good for you" if they don't immediately understand exactly why it might be good for them? When has college language (or language gained in an earlier school level) been useful for you?