Coding over languages: the author argues that computer coding is all the language one needs besides English. From the editorial:

Don’t [parents] know that the Tower of Babel has been torn down? On your average smartphone, apps like Google Translate can do real-time voice translation. No one ever has to say worthless phrases like la plume de ma tante anymore. The app Waygo lets you point your phone at signs in Chinese, Japanese or Korean and get translations in English. Sometime in the next few years you’ll be able to buy a Bluetooth-based universal translator for your ear.

Yet students still need to take at least two years of foreign-language classes in high school to attend most four-year colleges. Three if they want to impress the admissions officer. Four if they’re masochists. Then they need to show language competency to graduate most liberal-arts programs. We tried to get my son out of a college language requirement. He pointed to his computer skills and argued that the internet is in English. (It’s true. As of March, 51.6% of websites were in English. Just 2% were Chinese.) We lost the argument. He took Japanese and has fun ordering sushi.

It’s not as if learning another language comes with a big payday. In 2002 the Federal Reserve and Harvard put out a study showing those who speak a foreign language earn 2% more than those who don’t.

High schools tend to follow colleges’ lead, but maybe that’s beginning to change. I read through all 50 states’ language requirements and only one requires either two years of a foreign language or two years of “computer technology approved for college admission requirements.”…

Let’s face it, the world is headed toward one language anyway. The American-based Germanic-named Uber was originato at the Le Web conference in Paris. In Shanghai, I’ve seen ads on trains and storefronts signs that read “Learn Wall Street English.”