[EDLING:1365] To Understand a Culture, Learn Its Language

[Francis M Hult]

via lg-policy...

> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i29/29b01101.htm
> >From the issue dated March 24, 2006
> 
> 
> To Understand a Culture, Learn Its Language
> By MICHAEL E. GEISLER
> 
> Some educators were politely enthusiastic when, in January, the Bush
> administration announced a new program to support student and faculty
> exchanges with foreign countries, as well as increased teaching of foreign
> languages in the United States. But others in academe greeted the news
> with a certain amount of cynicism, or even outright suspicion. They felt
> that, had such a program been started years ago, we might be in a better
> situation today vis--vis the Middle East, Muslim nations, and even our
> allies. Some thought that the $114-million set aside to support the
> teaching of "critical" languages like Arabic, Chinese, and Farsi was only
> a drop in the bucket. Some were uncomfortable about the defense-related
> agenda that was driving this new internationalism.
> 
> As a private citizen, I have a considerable degree of sympathy for all of
> those objections. However, as a professional involved in foreign-language
> education, I am concerned that a debate over motives and agendas, hidden
> or overt, may itself prove to be an obstacle to language learning. It does
> not matter whether the primary purpose of the program is to provide the
> U.S. intelligence agencies and military with better linguistic expertise,
> which might conceivably be used to interfere in the internal affairs of
> other countries or to support American global hegemony.  Studying other
> peoples' languages and cultures will be a positive force in history, no
> matter what the intentions of those who support the program.  That is part
> of what Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, called "the cunning irony of
> reason"  the notion that putting enlightened ideas into practice, for
> whatever purposes, will ultimately result in enlightened ends.
> 
> Twice in the past, the United States mounted a sweeping effort to enhance
> Americans' language skills for primarily military reasons. The results in
> both cases were such that even the most liberal academics would have to
> approve of the measures in retrospect. First, during World War II, the
> military made a huge investment in training specialists in German and
> Japanese, both for intelligence purposes and in preparation for postwar
> occupation and "re-education."  That is one of the major and decisive
> differences between the aftermaths of the two world wars. In
> contradistinction to the spirit of the Treaty of Versailles, whose primary
> purposes were to humiliate Germany and recoup the financial cost of the
> war from the Germans, after World War II, the Allies realized that helping
> the Germans and Japanese build more-stable democracies would be a better
> strategy for preventing future wars.
> 
> That strategy, carried out with the help of thousands of trained
> interpreters and cultural experts who spoke German and Japanese, succeeded
> beyond anybody's wildest imagination at the time. Germany and Japan have
> since become solidly democratic nations and respected members of the
> international community. That would not have been possible without the
> help provided by German- and Japanese-speaking Americans, who were able to
> show the people in the defeated countries a genuine vision of democratic
> change and the benefits of including all members of society in the
> political process. Second, after the Soviets launched Sputnik, the U.S.
> government made a large investment in the training of Russian linguists
> and professionals in other disciplines with expertise in the Soviet Union.
> Those experts probably made a significant contribution to keeping the cold
> war from heating up at various times, and perhaps even to nurturing
> perestroika.  They certainly have been heavily involved in building strong
> political and economic links between the United States and Russia since
> the fall of the Soviet Union.
> 
> Both those projects were driven primarily by military agendas; both
> produced results that even dyed-in-the-wool pacifists should applaud. That
> was no coincidence, given that in both cases the defense agenda was driven
> by a foreign-policy agenda that had learned an important lesson from the
> end of World War I: Without the ability to communicate with people who (as
> was the case in Germany and Japan during World War II) have a radically
> different mind-set from your own, genuine changes in the geopolitical
> landscape will not be possible. Many of us who are involved in
> foreign-language teaching have, at some point or another, made the
> argument that just learning a foreign language contributes to
> intercultural understanding. The reason is that with our comprehension of
> another people's linguistic makeup comes a better understanding of their
> mentality; the two are inextricably interwoven. We should not suddenly
> lose faith in that argument just because this latest opportunity to
> enhance intercultural dialogue comes from a source with an agenda that
> many of us may disagree with.
> 
> I prefer educated military and intelligence officials to uneducated ones,
> and foreign-language skills are definitely part of the education I
> support. A soldier who speaks the language of the foreign country in which
> he or she is stationed  whether the reason for the U.S. military presence
> there is good or bad  is more likely to ask questions first and shoot
> later than a soldier who does not. An officer who has undergone the kind
> of training in language or area studies that the Bush administration is
> now proposing will almost certainly make wiser decisions with regard to
> the civilian population than one who relies solely on his or her own set
> of cultural parameters.
> 
> In addition, many members of the military join the civilian work force
> after their retirement from active duty. Those who have acquired and
> practiced foreign-language and area-studies skills could contribute
> enormously to foreign-language education in the United States and, thus,
> to intercultural dialogue.
> 
> Those retired officers would make a quantitative difference, increasing
> the numbers of foreign-language teachers in this country. They would also
> probably make a qualitative difference because they could pass on to their
> students (whether inside the military or not) the intercultural skills
> they had acquired. Retirees who never learned such skills would pass on a
> very different set of tools, more likely geared toward traditional
> military purposes.
> 
> At the Middlebury College Language Schools and our new affiliate, the
> Monterey Institute of International Studies, there is a long tradition of
> teaching members of the military and intelligence agencies and traditional
> students in the same courses on foreign languages and foreign-language
> pedagogy. At Middlebury we ask those who normally carry side arms to put
> them aside for the duration of their training with us, but that is the
> only way in which we treat them differently from our (more numerous)
> civilian students.
> 
> We are proud of that tradition because we believe that teaching foreign
> languages and cultures, and other subjects in area studies, will
> inevitably lead to long-term improvements in communication among
> countries. That is a strategic aim all Americans should be glad to
> support, no matter how we feel about the economic, political, or military
> interests that drive the initial effort.
> 
> Michael E. Geisler is dean of the Language Schools and the Schools Abroad
> program, and a professor of German, at Middlebury College. He is editor of
> National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative
> (University Press of New England, 2005).
> 
> http://chronicle.com
> Section: The Chronicle Review
> Volume 52, Issue 29, Page B11