by Erica Kuhlmann ‘22

Montgomery County requires all students to take at least two years of a foreign language in high school in order to graduate. At Sherwood, the languages available for students to take are Spanish, French, and Italian. These three languages are very similar, all being romance languages spoken in western Europe. If students are required to take languages, why not provide them with a little variety?

It would be useful for students to have the opportunity to take a language with a different alphabet, like Chinese (the most common language in the world after English), Japanese (a very useful business language), Russian, or Arabic. Learning a language is also an important gateway to learning about the cultures that speak that language, and foreign language classes typically cover cultural material. Including an Asian or African language would show Sherwood’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and teach Sherwood students to explore and value cultures from across the globe. Ultimately, sticking solely to romance languages underestimates the ability of students to learn languages that don’t share roots with English, as well as depriving students of more varied linguistic and cultural learning opportunities.