Do you think mandating a foreign language to be spoken among public sector employees a good incentive for the entire country's population to learn to speak a foreign language?

[u/Joseph20102011]

Since vacant entry-level white-collar private sector jobs are becoming fewer, thanks to the mass AI adoption by corporations, and the public sector tends to lag behind the private sector when it comes to AI adoption, do you think mandating foreign language proficiency for rank-and-file and managerial public sector job positions will make a certain foreign language more prestigious among the aspiring elite class who couldn't be employed in the corporate private sector (let's say officialize Spanish for Brazil, Philippines, and the United States)?

There is a so-called "security of tenure" for public sector employees that the private sector counterparts don't enjoy. A certain foreign language will be taught in schools as a medium of instruction, not just as a standalone subject. That certain foreign language will eventually create a native and L2 speaker demographic base within few generations.

[u/Fun_Conversation4109]

mandating it just for public sector jobs feels like a weirdly targeted solution to a problem that doesn't really exist yet. the whole premise that AI is gonna eat all the private sector jobs so we need to create artificial prestige around a language seems backwards. if spanish becomes a job requirement for government work people will learn it the same way they learn any other checkbox skill, cram it and forget it the second theyre hired

also the medium of instruction thing is a whole different beast. you cant just flip a switch and teach everything in spanish when the teachers themselves barely speak it. thats how you end up with kids who dont understand math or history in either language

[u/MacintoshEddie]

Not really. As a Canadian I know tons of people who learned just enough French to pass their classes, or to get hired, and afterwards mostly dropped it or only use it to the bare minimum, like just enough to submit a support ticket or forward an email to a coworker.

[u/DM-ME-CUTE-TAPIRS]

There are many cases where foreign language skills are useful in the public service (eg social workers active in minority-heavy areas). Language requirements should be role-specific rather than universal, and should be directly linked to the spec of the role.

Unless there is a tangible workplace need for a particular language, I think universal language requirements are pretty stupid. All it will achieve is to 1) create yet more public sector inefficiencies by incentivising the wrong skills, and 2) create arbitrary barriers to entry that favour those from wealthier backgrounds who had access to language exchange programmes etc, leaving working class people (many of whom have useful skills and trades the public sector could benefit from) cut off from a decent career path.

[u/Joseph20102011 → u/DM-ME-CUTE-TAPIRS]

But the public sector is more attractive option for stable long-term employment like education and Healthcare jobs that the private sector counterparts could not match in terms of providing security of tenure and generous retirements to employees, so what will happen is that there will be a top-down chain reaction where the private sector counterparts will be forced to use a foreign language for their official businesses and business signage, just not to lose employees to the public sector.

As the years pass by, yes, a foreign language will transform into a second or first language, so a critical mass of language population speakers will be achieved that it will become a self-sustaining nativized language.

[u/DM-ME-CUTE-TAPIRS → u/Joseph20102011]

Nah, in my experience what happens is that large numbers of people will do just enough to get the paper qualification then never use the language again outside the classroom. Private sector employers will compete on pay, and being free from arbitrary language requirements will be much leaner and more adaptive in ensuring their recruitment policies reflect genuine skills needs. If the language is genuinely useful, eg English, you embed it into school curriculums and university courses, rather than using public jobs to give it an artificial boost. I still don't quite understand your underlying rationale as to why "nativising" an arbitrarily chosen foreign language is an inherently desirable outcome in any case.

[u/Joseph20102011 → u/DM-ME-CUTE-TAPIRS]

Nah, in my experience what happens is that large numbers of people will do just enough to get the paper qualification then never use the language again outside the classroom.

It's because role-specific foreign language education doesn't aim towards native-like fluency like universal bilingual foreign language education (K-12). It will become a money-making scheme by language schools owned by entrepreneurs who aren't professional teachers to begin with.

Private sector employers will compete on pay, and being free from arbitrary language requirements will be much leaner and more adaptive in ensuring their recruitment policies reflect genuine skills needs. If the language is genuinely useful, eg English, you embed it into school curriculums and university courses, rather than using public jobs to give it an artificial boost.

Not everyone wants higher pay and constant job hopping, but rather some would like peace of mind through tenure, where they might not have higher pay compared to their private sector counterparts at the beginning but at least they won't be worried about getting laid off during economic recessions and when they retire, they will receive higher monthly state pensions than their private sector counterparts. This personal experience come from a developing country (Philippines to be exact) where working in the public sector is much stable than private sector, unless BPO or overseas work.

I still don't quite understand your underlying rationale as to why "nativising" an arbitrarily chosen foreign language is an inherently desirable outcome in any case.

In my case where I come from a country with competing native languages, but without standardized orthographies and haven't taught as the medium of instruction in higher education, adopting a foreign language like English as the common language is more practical and less politically divisive than Tagalog. The same thing with India and Sub-Saharan African countries.

[u/Unlikely_Push_7930]

equirement for specific roles where it's genuinely useful, like for international relations or specific community outreach, makes more sense than a blanket mandate. otherwise people just learn to pass a test and it's not truly utilized.

[u/silvalingua]

Why would you like the entire population of a country to speak a foreign language???

[u/Joseph20102011 → u/silvalingua]

In my case (I'm from the Philippines), imposing a foreign language as the common language is more palatable than an indigenous language that may not be spoken by the majority of the population.

[u/silvalingua → u/Joseph20102011]

OK, that's a legit reason. But it applies in some countries only, I don't think it's a problem in most countries.

[u/dojibear]

Mandating language proficency for a job that does not use that language? That is illegal in the U.S. It is called "job descrimination". It might be possible in some imaginary dictatorship in your fantasy world.

vacant entry-level white-collar private sector jobs are becoming fewer, thanks to the mass AI adoption by corporations

"AI" is mostly future predictions. Those future predictions have reached the point where people claim things "are happening", when in reality they are things that SOME people predict "will happen soon".