Two years worth of language classes are the minimum graduation requirement. It is necessary to finish high school, and learning a new language can also be helpful when it comes to getting a job or travelling. However, I believe that many students would have an easier time picking and learning a language if McNeil offered more languages than we do now.

McNeil currently offers Spanish, French, German, Latin, and American Sign Language (ASL). All of these languages have practical applications aside from getting graduation credits. However, they only represent a few of the many cultures and ethnicities of the students at McNeil.

One of the most prominent cultures is the Asian population. McNeil has many Asian students, and other students who are interested in Asian cultures. Offering languages like Japanese, Korean or Chinese would present students with a way to learn about these cultures through the language. Mandarin (Chinese) and Japanese are two of the top 10 spoken languages in the world. These languages would also give students the opportunity to learn languages which are not based on the common letters of the English alphabet. Hindi could also be offered, as it is one of the main languages of India.

Russian would also be a good language to offer, due to its popularity and the huge size of the country itself. Portuguese is a language spoken all over South America, so it has many practical uses. Arabic is also a common language, from which some European languages have borrowed words. Bengalian is derived from ancient Sanskrit, which was also the basis for languages like Latin and Persian, though it is mainly a native language and is rarely spoken by outsiders.

Though McNeil already offers Latin, it is not the only ancient language from which many words are derived. Schools could offer ancient Greek in addition, which would give students easy access to the language upon which many mathematical concepts and English words are based. Italian was also present many centuries ago, and Italy was one of the leading countries during the Renaissance, both in literature and art.

There are a countless number of languages that could be offered at schools in RRISD (and in the United States, in general) and that would benefit the students who learned them. Our school is already incredibly diverse, so I think that we should embrace that and offer classes that cover more than simply what is most common. Learning a language can be difficult, but given enough choices, students could find one that they are passionate about.