For a person’s education to be complete, that education has to expand beyond just the standard mathematics and English. It must include science, the arts and foreign language.

However, the General Education/Graduation Requirements Policy Committee, the group that determines what the general education requirements for graduation are for every undergraduate student, disagrees. The committee has recommended to cut the foreign language graduation requirement beginning in the fall 2013 semester.

The committee explains its recommendation by citing the two years of foreign language high school students must take to enter into the CSU system, yet an additional third year to satisfy the system’s foreign language requirements.

The policy committee’s other main pillar of support was pointing out how most community colleges use their foreign language classes to satisfy both the foreign language requirement and the humanities requirement.

While both these points seem to stand on their own at first glance, the committee failed to consider certain relevant points regarding the fate of the educations of every CSU student.

Possibly the most glaring point the committee seems to have glossed over is the quality of a modern high school education, or the lack thereof.

Two years of foreign language in high school is not equivalent to a year of foreign language in college. If the foreign language graduation requirement was removed from Sacramento State’s curriculum, the only foreign language a significant amount of students would have would just be from high school.

As for foreign language classes taken at community college versus full-fledged universities, the committee does not seem to know community colleges require more humanities classes than the two needed to meet the current foreign language requirement.

For example, at Sacramento City College, students must take a grand total of nine units in humanities and arts classes in order to complete their general education requirements. Students need to take both a humanities class and foreign language classes in order to transfer.

As a response to this action, the foreign language department has posted a petition on the department website urging the committee to reverse its decision.

The department’s counterarguments highlight how important learning a second language is in a diverse community like Sac State, much less the Sacramento area as a whole. The petition also addresses how learning a foreign language helps students learn about other cultures and those cultures’ art.

Yet, the foreign language department’s site only touches upon the surface of how learning a second language can profoundly help a person.

Students learn about their native language – in this case, English – by studying other languages and how they are structured.

English has roots in many languages, such as Latin, German, French and Greek, just to name a few. Learning any one of those languages will almost certainly foster a better understanding of English as a whole.

Languages not linked to English can also be incredibly useful to know. If a person wanted to work for a large corporation, knowing an Asian language, such as Mandarin, would benefit the employment opportunities of that person greatly.

The international relationships the world economy hinges on today are made possible sole due to people who learned at least one other language, yet the General Education/Graduation Requirements Policy Committee wants to cut foreign language from the graduation requirements.

The budget problems must be worse than previously thought, if this is an option being considered to reduced costs.