Anyone that is exempt from foreign language in HS

shawbridge
Sun, 21 Sep 2014 18:21:47 +0000

We concluded in middle school that our severely dyslexic son couldn’t do foreign languages. He couldn’t do Latin in middle school and after a semester of Spanish in middle school pronounced “mas” as “mass.” He couldn’t hear the sounds in Spanish and couldn’t spell well enough for Latin. I had a conversation with the head of foreign languages at his HS, who said, knowing my son, he could take the lower track Spanish course, work very hard, get all As (that is what he does) and leave after three years knowing no Spanish. He recommended against wasting our son’s time. So, against our son’s wishes at the time, no language in HS.

It may or may not have hurt him. Rolling the tape forward, he got into several very good schools including Ivies. There is some probability that not taking a language contributed to him not getting into a couple of schools (one my alma mater) but these schools have such a low percentage of admits that it could have been lots of other random things as well. He chose a school without any foreign language requirement and did extremely well in college. Rolling the tape forward a little farther, he co-founded a tech company and became its CEO. A bit later brought in a senior executive much more capable of growing it and started grad school jointly in data science and an MBA at a prestigious school. At the end of the day, I doubt he could be much better off.

But, in some states, the state universities require lanaguage for admission. If so, I’d be looking for the kind of plan that @nettiK4137‌ suggested.