MHS world language classes lack diversity

As of the 2017-2018 school year, only three foreign languages are offered in the typical in-classroom style, and another is offered over video at MHS. These languages are French, Spanish, German, and Japanese respectively.

With only four world languages – three of which are European – this leaves a lot of the world’s languages and cultures completely out of the eyes of high schoolers, and instead contains them to two small parts of the world: western Europe and Japan.

It’s important for the world to be seen from other viewpoints in the form of culture and language, but with only four languages being taught directly at MHS and not online, it limits the ability to learn about the rest of the world and other peoples, and focuses just on the first-world nations in western Europe, and the first-world nation of Japan in eastern Asia.

Without the ability to understand other groups of people through language and culture, it’s easy to just disregard and call other people’s traditions pointless or irrelevant without giving it a second thought; however, this is currently happening across the country.

In this day and age, some Americans have the mentality: this is America, and if you come here you have to act American, be American, and speak American.

This sets a double standard where the world has to learn about America, but America doesn’t have to learn about the world in the slightest. With this double standard, feelings of fear and distrust set in, which all could be avoided if people took the time to learn about people, learn another language, and learn about other cultures with the intent to understand.