Spanish....
They're forcing Mandarin as a mandatory?
Yes, and it starts in grammar school
That wasn't clear in your original post but yeah we always had 2-3 options; German, Spanish, French.
Other languages are available, but not until middle school (7th grade or higher).
Re: mfr jobs. I'm with you 100% but I'm probably more skeptical than you on how realistic it is to bring those jobs back. I do a ton of international business and have been to almost every region of the world. The free market/globalization gennie is out of the bottle and will be hard to put back. These "developing nations" are booming in the industrial sector and their people are hungry for work, work hard and for pennies. Not sure how the US can compete with those wages without a strict a import regimen and isolationist attitude.
I fully agree, and I'm pretty skeptical about the return of manufacturing jobs to the US, as well. You comment above hit the nail squarely on the head. I cannot see America getting manufacturing jobs back, and paying what Americans consider a "living wage", or even "union scale". The cost of Living in this country, and the cost of Labor, especially unionized labor, disqualifies us from the competition by simply make the finished cost of a given product to expensive to compete with imported goods.
I hear the argument every day. People
claim they want to buy American, yet millions go to stores like Walmart or Sams, and buy imported goods, because they are cheaper. We
say we want American goods, but the reality is,
we buy price, and almost never look at the place of manufacture.
We do the same with cars. People argue that with me, but the fact is, imports, and cars that are assembled here by foreign companies out number the Domestic brands being sold, and further, more and more of out domestics are being built out side of our on boarders. Why? Simple. Cost of manufacturing.
Between the cost of labor, the cost of facilities, the cost of compliance to government regulations, and the highest taxes on business on the planet, and the threat of those taxes going even higher in the next 4 years, the thought, or even the wish, of recovering manufacturing jobs in this country diminishes.
Anyway, going back to the original topic, like somebody told me once about teaching our kids Mandarin. At least when the Chinese come to collect their debt we'll have some of our people to defend us.
Geez. How true is that?
