If Andy Burnham is serious about freedom of movement for young people across Europe, it’s got to work both ways. If it was introduced tomorrow, would it actually help our 1 million young people not in employment, education, or training, get jobs in Europe? I’m not sure that it would. Just because most are not linguistically equipped to work in other parts of Europe. So what is Andy going to do about that?
For as long as I can remember, there has always been a complacency about language learning in the UK. Where the only people linguistically fluent are those born and brought up in bilingual families. Where we expect everyone else in the world to accommodate us.
If you want to learn another language, it is easy enough to put on your headphones and log onto Duolingo. It’s free and it will show you the structure of any language. But it can only take you so far. Language learning is a social activity. What you have learned with your headphones will quickly fade if you’re not using it day in and day out. As a young man I once joined a Spanish evening class at a local secondary school. It folded after one term. And -yes – I know this in every major town there are language circles. But they are primarily for people who already have a working knowledge of other languages and who want to polish their skills. Not for someone starting out from scratch
