[lg policy] Foreign Language for Foreign Policy?

[Harold Schiffman]

Foreign Language for Foreign Policy?
November 23, 2010
By Russell A. Berman

These are troubled times for language programs in the United States,
which have been battered by irresponsible cutbacks at all levels.
Despite the chatter about globalization and multilateralism that has
dominated public discourse in recent years, leaders in government and
policy circles continue to live in a bubble of their own making,
imagining that we can be global while refusing to learn the languages
or learn about the cultures of the rest of the world. So it was surely
encouraging that Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign
Relations and a fixture of the foreign policy establishment, agreed to
deliver the keynote address at the American Council on the Teaching of
Foreign Languages Annual Convention in Boston on November 19.


Haass is a distinguished author, Oberlin- and Oxford-educated, and an
influential voice in American debates. The good news is that in his
talk, "Language as a Gateway to Global Communities," Haass expressed
strong support for increased foreign language learning opportunities.
He recognized the important work that language instructors undertake
as well as the crucial connection between language and culture:
language learning is not just technical mastery of grammar but rather,
in his words, a "gateway" to a thorough understanding of other
societies. We in the language learning community should take heed and
be sure to build curriculums that provide systematic introductions to
those histories, political systems, and ways of life. The Modern
Language Association has made curricular recommendations along these
lines in the report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education," which
ACTFL President Eileen Glisan praised in her remarks that preceded the
keynote address.

Haass claims that in an era of tight budgets, we need convincing
arguments to rally support for languages. Of course that's true, but
-- and this is the bad news -- despite his support for language as a
gateway to other cultures, he countenances only a narrowly
instrumental defense for foreign language learning, limited to two
rationales: national security and global economy. At the risk of
schematizing his account too severely, this means: more Arabic for
national security and more Mandarin, Hindi, and, en passant, Korean
for the economy. It appears that in his view the only compelling
arguments for language-learning involve equipping individual Americans
to be better vehicles of national interest as defined by Washington.
In fact, at a revealing moment in the talk, Haass boiled his own
position down to a neat choice: Fallujah or Firenze. We need more
Arabic to do better in Fallujah , i.e., so we could have been more
effective in the Iraq War (or could be in the next one?), and we need
less Italian because Italy (to his mind) is a place that is only about
culture.

In this argument, Italian — like other European languages — is a
luxury. There was no mention of French as a global language, with its
crucial presence in Africa and North America. Haass even seems to
regard Spanish as just one more European language, except perhaps that
it might be useful to manage instability in Mexico. Such arguments
that reduce language learning to foreign policy objectives get too
simple too quickly. And they run the risk of destroying the same
foreign language learning agenda they claim to defend. Language
learning in Haass's view ultimately becomes just a boot camp for our
students to be better soldiers, more efficient in carrying out the
projects of the foreign policy establishment. That program stands in
stark contrast to a vision of language learning as part of an
education of citizens who can think for themselves.

Haass’s account deserves attention: he is influential and thoughtful,
and he is by no means alone in reducing the rationale for foreign
language learning solely to national foreign policy needs. Yet why
should all local educational decisions be subject to Washington
approval? Moreover, given the poor track record of foreign policy
leaders in anticipating national needs, why should we suddenly treat
their analyses as the touchstone for curricular planning? And,
finally, the contribution of language learning to student intellectual
growth is too large, complex and dynamic to be squeezed onto the menu
of skill sets the government imagines it might need in the future.

Yet even on his own instrumental terms, Haass seemed to get it wrong.
If language learning were primarily about plugging into large
economies more successfully, then we should be offering more Japanese
and German (still two very big economies after all), but they barely
showed up on his map.

The much more important issue involves getting beyond instrumental
thinking altogether, at least in the educational sphere. Second
language acquisition is a key component of education because it builds
student ability in language as such. Students who do well in a second
language do better in their first language. With the core language
skills — abilities to speak and to listen, to read and to write — come
higher-order capacities: to interpret and understand, to recognize
cultural difference, and, yes, to appreciate traditions, including
one’s own. Language learning is not just an instrumental skill, any
more than one's writing ability is merely about learning to type on a
keyboard. On the contrary, through language we become better thinkers,
and that’s what education is about, at least outside Washington.

Russell A. Berman is vice president of the Modern Language Association
and professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford
University.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/23/berman

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