I have yet to meet one person happy about having to take Spanish,French or German because of some asinine requirement.

Shouldn’t students take a foreign language class because they actually want tolearn the language, not because they are forced to?

That sounds like an interesting concept: learning a foreign language because youwant to. If you really want to learn it, you must immerse yourself in thelanguage. It takes countless hours and study. This is not a task that can becompleted in three semesters for four hours a week.

We should have started learning the language earlier and worked our way throughit over the course of several years. Colleges cannot remedy the mistake of notteaching us what our junior high school should have.

Good for you if want to start learning now, but don’t waste the time of the restof us who are not driven to communicate in a foreign language.

If we want to learn, it will take longer than a year and a half. If we don’twant to learn it, don’t make us waste our time for a year and a half.

Seriously, go up and ask your Japanese teacher if he/she learned to speakJapanese in 3 semesters. It is impossible. If it is impossible then it is awaste of time and money–your money. This simply means that the university is inthe business of raising our tuition and wasting our money on this stupidlanguage requirement.

March 11, 1991, Sacramento State became the only California State University tohave a foreign language requirement. This apparently was such a splendid ideathat all of the other CSU colleges could’ve followed suit and added a languagerequirement. Except that they didn’t.

The only other CSU school to require this alleged higher learning is CSUMonterey Bay. The rest of the campuses had enough insight to not implement thisrequirement.

Looks like Sac State and Monterey Bay students are the only individuals who havea general education board with their fingers up their noses — among otherplaces.

I demand a show of hands of how many people actually come out of Sac Statespeaking another language perfectly.

Imagine learning Spanish in a classroom because everyone is there to learn thelanguage. Wouldn’t it be nice for teachers? Wouldn’t it be nice for students tonot be thrown into a classroom with a majority of people grumbling about beingthere?

Most important, it would be nice for those of us who are not going to learn tospeak French fluently in a matter of 3 semesters to be able to spend our timeelsewhere.

This is not even the worst part of it. I tried to get into Japanese last yearbut the class was insufferably full. Spanish is no exception. How can theuniversity require of us this subject and then make it nearly impossible to finda class that isn’t overflowing out of the door?

With state budget cut backs more classes are being cut. So the problem isn’tgetting better.

Do your remember your first day trying to add a language class? You were sittingthere feeling smug with your name on top of the list.

Then you saw those 11 other people sweating bullets hoping they could add theclass. It is quite a spectacle. There is always the familiar plea: “But I needthis class to graduate.” The sad part is that this is all done just to fulfill aworthless requirement.

For transfer students the problem is exacerbated. Many transfers come here withassociates degrees and hope to graduate in two years. Unfortunately they cannot.While their General Education was completed at their previous college, it is notdone here. They still have 3 semesters of foreign language to complete here.This means taking an taxing schedule to graduate on time.

What are we gaining as an institution from this requirement? We are gainingfrustration, turmoil and a plethora of teachers treating us like childrenbecause we can’t speak their damn language. It is giving me a headache, and Isee no potential remedy.

Parlez-vous la langue de Tipton? Respond to [email protected].