Job hunting roadblock: Bi-lingual required

I kind of have to agree...it is frustrating. On the other hand we expect most of Europe to be bi lingual as well...its a slippery slope...

 

true enough...we are required to take a foreign language here, but it is not necessarily Spanish. I took french fat load a good it done me...I think there should be some requirement for a second language, and it should be taught from elementary school on...none of this two years in High School it does very little to learn that old.

 

We already have ESL programs in our schools. It would not be difficult to change them to language programs all around. I see nothing wrong with teaching our children other languages...They learn faster at a young age so many languages could be taught.

It is frustrating, but it is also difficult for them to get jobs when they dont speak English at all. If you go to france, you try to speak their language and they respect you for it, will speak english to you. but if you just go around asking htem if they speak english, the will not help. we are not the only country with bi-lingual issues.

I see no reason why the same should not be said here...to become a citizen do you not need to know a certain amount of the language?

 

Makes sense to me. Spanish is a widely spoken language in your area, so in a competitive business landscape why wouldn't they want someone who's bilingual? I'd call it being competitive, hardly discriminative.

I'd also be careful to call the Latino population advantaged, especially the bilingual portion of it. Historically the education of Latinos has been along the lines of "knocking" the Latino out of them. For generations education was about making them act like everyone else, and to make them forget their heritage. Until about 30 years ago Spanish speaking students were placed in Special Education classes because the teachers simply didn't want to deal with teaching them English. Speaking Spanish (including being bilingual) was thought to be a cognitive defect.

I see nothing wrong with what they're doing. If this is some sort of job discrimination, asking for a college graduate would also be discrimination. We don't have equal access to jobs, it depends on our skills/experiences.

I do think that Spanish should be taught throughout school, but that'd never happen in the current political environment. Nationalism runs too high, and people would claim that it's a ploy to replace English as the national language. Being an ESL teacher it's really frustrating to not speak a second language fluently. I can get by with German, but none of my students speak German. French and Spanish are the most common (thanks to colonialization) but I digress.

 

I live in Canada. Here its hard to get a reception job without speaking fluent french.

Its frustrating, but I totally understand why!

I have taken French for many years, but I am in no way fluent.