Education: Trend

The foreign languages a nation chooses to study are, like its songs, one measure of its emotional condition. Last week Dr. Theodore Huebener, director of foreign languages in New York City’s public schools, threw light on the present U. S. attitude toward foreigners in a report on the languages studied by the city’s high-school youth. Overwhelming favorite (107,000 students): French. Second (41,400): Spanish. Well down on the list (16,500) but gaining fast: Italian. Most spectacular trend: a five-year drop (since Hitler) of 35% in the number studying German (now 16,900). At the present rate of decline, Dr. Huebener feared, German will soon approach its 1918 unpopularity, when only 40 New York City pupils studied it.