Tonight we had an interesting discussion with our eleven year old. She has to make up her second language option in school hesitating between Spanish and Chinese.

In my world of BRIC countries emerging, where America has already once lost its triple A rating and dominant role; where the balance is in east favor and her and Swedens’ future will be determined by economic forces in English, Portoguese, Russian, Chinese and Arabic conrext I was very firm on my recommendation. (Yes, French and German is also useful to some degree).

It is naturally not that easy to understand what is going on in the world and that it is at least hypothetically possible that China will bail out her future Europe from its current financial mess.

She already knows some basic Spanish but can’t argue on why she wants to learn it beyond “cool” and “fun”. We ended up recommending her Chinese but she should follow her heart and motivation as this would give her more satisfaction and result. She panicked in a pre-teen way …

I realized my question was not about her choices. My reflection is more on why Spanish is an option in the first place.

Why?

What strategic national capability do we build using increasingly scarce tax money by investing in Spanish fluency?

Feel free to study whatever you want but not with our increasingly limited national educational budget. Do we teach it because we can? Who are we fooling here? Chinese or say “innovation” would be a better dilemma for two future capabilities young Swedes can benefit from and hence our nation, but Spanish?

Hello? What am I missing?