[EDLING:2075] Learning other languages must be national priority

[Francis M. Hult]

Via ILR...


 Learning other languages must be national priority<?xml:namespace prefix = o 
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By Nancy E. Roman  -- Originally published November 15, 2006

 

The standoff between the United States and Iran over nuclear weapons, the 
military challenge in Iraq, the threatening trade war with China - the 
pressing issues of the day all call for dialogue and understanding. 

Yet there is no dialogue without speech. There is no speech without language. 
And while the world is busy learning English, not many Americans are 
reciprocating in kind. 

Three hundred million Chinese are learning English. By 2025, China will have 
more English speakers than the United States. Meanwhile, only 34,000 American 
college students are studying Chinese. 

Roughly 10,000 American college students are studying Arabic, with only 300 
reaching advanced Arabic each year. Fewer than 1 percent of American high 
school students study Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Russian or 
Urdu. 

The trend lines are clear, but there is a tendency to dismiss them. English 
has become the language of international business. It is hard to go to any 
major international city and find hotel clerks and restaurateurs who cannot 
speak English. English also dominates the Internet. 

The path of least resistance is to slip comfortably into a sense that English 
is sufficient - until it is not. 

What we may be missing, as we bask in our ability to be understood, is that we 
lack the ability to understand. They get us, but do we get them? Chinese, 
Russians, Indians and, increasingly, Arabs have access to our literature, our 
intelligence, our technical manuals, our academic journals and our culture. We 
lack parallel access. We are choosing not to position ourselves to understand 
friends, foes, business partners or competitors. 

In foreign policy discussions at the Council on Foreign Relations, the need 
for critical language speakers repeatedly arises. The Pentagon wants officers 
to speak a second language to improve ground operations; intelligence agencies 
decry the lack of officers who can speak critical languages; international 
businesses fret about competition with India and China and their hundreds of 
millions of technically skilled, bilingual workers. 

Increasing the number of Americans who speak Mandarin, Arabic and other 
important languages is clearly in the national interest. Yet the American 
school system does little to expose its future workers, soldiers and diplomats 
to foreign languages when their brains are best able to learn them - in 
elementary school. 

It is time to change that. A handful of school systems are on the right track. 
In Chicago, a Mandarin program evolved after Mayor Richard M. Daley visited 
China. It now teaches nearly 10 percent of the American students who study 
Chinese. In Charlotte, N.C., the Asian Chamber of Commerce was able to 
persuade the school system there to begin teaching Chinese. In Oregon, the 
federal government is helping to fund a K-12 immersion program for Chinese. 

But we need to move faster. The most often cited obstacle to doing so is a 
shortage of teachers. As we move on all cylinders to recruit and develop 
language instructors, we should consider using new technologies to bring the 
best language teachers to the classroom - and to bring them early, beginning 
in kindergarten. 

An idea for the Gates Foundation, which supports foreign-language instruction 
efforts, is to develop quality video instruction for children, patterned after 
the videos used for foreign-service recruits, and make them available to 
schools on an optional basis. This approach would not be as effective as tens 
of thousands of live teachers in classrooms across the country, but it could 
be done for a fraction of the cost and could begin now, allowing schools to 
expose children early, capturing even a small percentage with an aptitude and 
desire to pursue language instruction, while laying the building blocks for 
more-intensive instruction later. 

Such a strategy has the added advantage of bringing high-quality teaching to 
schools in lower-income areas as well as to those in wealthier areas. 

President Bush's National Security Language Initiative sets aside $114 million 
to create incentives for K-12 language instruction, scholarships and other 
good ideas. Congress should fund it. 

But producing citizens who can communicate internationally is a task so 
important to the national interest and so large that it will require 
involvement far beyond that of the federal government. Parents, educators, not-
for-profit organizations, businesses and local school districts need to make 
foreign languages a priority for students, rather than a luxury for 
dilettantes. 

Languages should no longer be considered as part of the optional humanities. 
Instead, we should see them as akin to science and math - critical not only to 
crucial diplomatic and military goals but to competing successfully in a 
global economy. 

Nancy E. Roman is vice president and director of the Council on Foreign 
Relations' Washington program. Her e-mail is nroman at cfr.org. 


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