http://xkcd.com/771/#
The new xkcd comic seems relevant to some of the earlier discussion.
As for being bilingual, you learn languages differently when you're younger versus when you're older. Learning at an early age, you can learn the language nonnatively as if it were a native language. When you're older, the parts of your brain that allow this are no longer elastic enough to achieve that kind of learning, and you almost have to learn new languages by translating from your native one.
An amusing phenomenon is that some children who are raised bilingually can't even translate from one language to the other effectively. They're housed in the brain without any significant connection at all. Compare this to people who learn in secondary school, and they can barely learn a new language at all without knowing what words and phrases mean in their original language.
But this is far from the most ineffective aspect of the US education system.
The new xkcd comic seems relevant to some of the earlier discussion.
As for being bilingual, you learn languages differently when you're younger versus when you're older. Learning at an early age, you can learn the language nonnatively as if it were a native language. When you're older, the parts of your brain that allow this are no longer elastic enough to achieve that kind of learning, and you almost have to learn new languages by translating from your native one.
An amusing phenomenon is that some children who are raised bilingually can't even translate from one language to the other effectively. They're housed in the brain without any significant connection at all. Compare this to people who learn in secondary school, and they can barely learn a new language at all without knowing what words and phrases mean in their original language.
But this is far from the most ineffective aspect of the US education system.
