Arob, I disagree with you. To be able to analyze a piece of poetry, carefully identifying, dissecting and categorizing each use of figurative language and to be able to carefully conceptualize a piece of literary genius (i.e. Shakespeare, Harper Lee, Cherly Albury, William Golding etc) requires and reinforces your critical thinking skills, so i don't know how you're "unable to see the link between English literature and critical thinking". Also, by the time as I finished 9th grade Spanish (2005) i was fairly capable of communicating with tourists as I did work study at the min of tourism welcome center and conversed with a few spanish natives off of the cruise ships. However, the point of teaching and testing 9th graders Spanish isn't to ensure that they go out into the world, at that time, and communicate with the tourists. However, the sooner they begin to acquire the language, and the more they study/practice it, when they do graduate and enter the work world, they will be equipped to speak "Spanish for hotel workers or Spanish for distributive marketing". On that note, introducing these disciplines back into the BJC was a good move Minister!