Think tank recommends English being made sole obligatory foreign language in schools

This week the government’s economic think tank, NERV, issued a report recommending, among several changes, that English be made the only obligatory foreign language in Czech schools. The idea is that time allocated for additional languages could be better spent on areas where until now many schools have been weak: the teaching of information technology or economic or financial literacy. A little earlier to I spoke to Daniel Munich, associate professor at CERGE-EI in Prague and a member of NERV.

Photo: European Commission

“The reasoning is that English is becoming the most important language not only for citizens in their future professions but their lives as a whole. Simply said, it’s certain that they will need it, whereas the same cannot quite be said about other languages. There are lower certainties what Czechs will use German, Italian or Spanish – which is not to say they shouldn’t learn those languages – only that other options should be considered. They lack many other skills which are not currently taught: IT (information technology), legal literacy, financial and economic literacy). The curriculum is already so full that it cannot be expanded for students further, which means that the workload has to be optimised somehow.”

There has been a lot of discussion about economic literacy as you said there and some schools are taking part in pilot programmes. Even one Prague elementary school recognised students for completing a course in basic economic concepts: do you think that is the way things should go?

“Elementary school is a little unnecessary but certainly finance and economic should be covered from the first years at high school all the way through.”

There was some grumbling among teachers after the report was announced, for example, that German should also be included, for obvious historic reasons, Germany is the Czech Republic’s neighbour and so on...

“What we’re not saying is that someone should not study this or any other language. Not at all. But those decisions can be taken by pupils and their parents based on different considerations: someone in border areas may find it much more useful to learn German, for example, someone else Spanish, if it’s a rational preference. But it should be up to them to decide whether they have the need to learn another foreign language besides English. We are recommending that more space be given the other field mentioned and trying to open minds about the possibilities. Ultimately, though, it will come down to individual schools whether they decide to make implement things like IT in their programme.”

Are there enough specialists at that level who are willing to teach that subject?

“IT is a specific problem in the Czech Republic. It seems that many teachers unfortunately have lower IT skills than some of their pupils. There are two groups of kids: those who learn how to use computers at home and those who have little knowledge and currently many schools are not equalising the difference, or closing the divide. That is definitely something that needs to improve with long-term efforts.”

Regarding IT, it seems as if every second job offer on the internet these days is IT-related, so I suppose it’s not possible to underestimate the importance of the field in the future...

“It’s not only about jobs: it’s primarily about life. About future lives. Over the next 50 years today’s pupils will grow up to need IT not only in their work but in everything they do in society and the world.”