Early Language Education is Critical For U.S.

There’s an old saying: “If you speak three languages, you’re tri-lingual. Speaking two languages makes you bi-lingual. But if you speak only one language, then you’re an American.” The problem is today, that is no longer a joke—it is a fundamental reason why our economy, morality, and national security are in drastic need of overhaul. With less than two weeks remaining before what could arguably be the most important presidential election of modern times, given the highly erratic stock markets and credit-frozen financial system that has dominated the news lately, the issue of education is not at the forefront of national concerns. But education, as the foundation of any economic recovery, deserves more scrutiny when it comes to the stump speeches of Obama and McCain. One fundamental issue of paramount concern that was not touched upon in the recent educational debate at Teachers College was the foreign language deficit we have in this nation.

Consider this: there are more English learners in China than in the whole population of the United States. Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, and many other critical languages of commerce and engagement are not being learned and spoken at an early age in the United States. In order to engage with the world and remain a potent force, we need to speak the languages of the world. In order to start companies in Dubai and sell products and services to the Indonesians and the Chinese, we need a public education system that recognizes and, most importantly, is willing to underwrite investments in foreign language acquisition. Offering an array of college-level foreign language coursework at American universities is essentially useless without a concrete foundation in all aspects of foreign language acquisition at an early age.

According to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, only 7 percent of public elementary school students are adequately learning a foreign language, whereas in Korea, China, Japan, and many countries throughout Europe and Latin America, they have officially mandated the learning of a second language in elementary education. There is no excuse for our obliviousness to the outside world as English—though still the lingua franca of international business, internet websites, and scholarly discourse—is being increasingly challenged by languages of the future. Since children are the most capable of grasping foreign languages and, with frequent practice, can acquire them without exorbitant effort, I do not see a plausible argument for why more critical foreign languages are not taught in American public schools. Despite innumerable and noble programs such as the government-sponsored Boren Fellowship and Foreign Language and Area Studies language enhancement initiatives to encourage college students to critically learn central foreign languages uncommonly spoken in the United States, the government is unequivocally behind the curve when it comes to advancing the foreign language capabilities of American students. In other words, investments ought to be made in elementary and middle schools instead of in colleges and universities. The older students get, the more difficult it is to comfortably and adequately learn a foreign language.

While the wealth and influence in the global community is undergoing a noticeable shift from Western Europe and the United States to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, American children are still learning Spanish and French in inordinate numbers. Like the American automobile industry that failed to demonstrate prescience by investing in trucks and minivans instead of hybrids and electric vehicles, the inability of public schools and chief local, state, and national administrators to prepare the next generation for a world where Americans can no longer rely on fluently speaking one language is an active land mine in the field of education. Americans have been complacent in foreign language acquisition due to the political, economic, and social pre-eminence of the United States, in addition to the widespread influence of the English language.

Of course, as discussed in the educational debate at Teachers College, students’ abilities to do basic reading and arithmetic are pillars of their comprehensive education, but the foreign languages outside of Spanish and French need to be highlighted as well. To put it another way, a love of languages needs to be nurtured in our youngest students for the sake of our national security and long-term economics interests.

The author is an Ed.M student in International Educational Development at Teachers College, Columbia University.