Foreign language required by some residency programs??????

I've never heard of that one. But I guess if it's in an area that's 90% hispanic it makes sense. I don't think it's discriminatory. It saves you the cost and effort of applying if you don't speak the language. The alternative would be for them to not make it a requirment but to only rank people with the relavent language skills. That's definately not a better situation for anyone.

Although in many parts of the country, Spanish is an unofficial 2nd language, it is still unofficial. Until our country adopts it officially as a 2nd language, I believe it is wrong to make it mandatory that someone speak a language that is not an official language of the country in which they live. To include it in the selection criteria is different. Although I speak Spanish, some of my colleagues do not. Our hospital has a great translator service, as many do that I have seen. So, yes, it slows things down a little, but to discriminate against people who do not speak a language that is not a recognized official language is not right!

How very interesting. If the program requiring the knowledge of Spanish is UNM, then I guess it would be acceptable (or by that token, anyone at Tulane, LSU, etc should know French, and English should not be required ).

Miklos said:

The language situation is a little bit more complicated than mentioned above.

See (for instance)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages_by_state#U

• United States
  • • No official language statewide, English is the de facto official language.
  • Carolinian (in the Northern Mariana Islands)
  • Chamorro (in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands)
  • English (in Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming)
  • French (in Louisiana)
  • Hawaiian (in Hawaii)
  • Samoan (in American Samoa)
  • Spanish (in New Mexico and Puerto Rico)

Regardless, although I believe that English needs to be our official language, there's nothing in federal law that makes English our official language. As noted above, it is our de facto language.

Click to expand...

I clicked on the "United States" hypertext and got this:

United States is the worst country in the world. It's a country with delusions of grandeur. It is the only "superpower" in history that went from creation to progress to decadence without the progress part. United States is run by a dumb president called George W Bsh who is in fact a big a-hole.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States"

Wow what an objective source of information.

valedictorian said:

I clicked on the "United States" hypertext and got this:

United States is the worst country in the world. It's a country with delusions of grandeur. It is the only "superpower" in history that went from creation to progress to decadence without the progress part. United States is run by a dumb president called George W Bsh who is in fact a big a-hole.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States"

Wow what an objective source of information.

Click to expand...

Anyone can edit wikipedia, which is why things like that can happen. Fortunately, there are also tons of people who monitor it and keep it on track - and will receive notices when one of their posts has been edited. The comment above was corrected in less than 5 minutes. You can look through the history of the page to see the corrections that people have made and the former things that were written there if you find a page like that again.

I personally think there is nothing wrong with requiring exposure to a foreign language. However I do not believe it should be mandated that it must be Spanish. This is why translation services exist.

robotsonic said:

Anyone can edit wikipedia, which is why things like that can happen. Fortunately, there are also tons of people who monitor it and keep it on track - and will receive notices when one of their posts has been edited. The comment above was corrected in less than 5 minutes. You can look through the history of the page to see the corrections that people have made and the former things that were written there if you find a page like that again.

Click to expand...

why do they allow anyone to edit their webpages?

Poety said:

why do they allow anyone to edit their webpages?

Click to expand...

that's the whole philosophy of WIKI. They use them within organizations as well, but the wikipedia is probably the most well known website.