Foreign-Language Learning Promoted
By Bradley Graham

President Bush announced plans yesterday to boost foreign-language study in the United States, casting the initiative as a strategic move to better engage other nations in combating terrorism and promoting freedom and democracy.

“This program is a part of a strategic goal, and that is to protect this country,” Bush said.

This article, from The Washington Post, notes a new initiative from the Administration that can only be applauded. Foreign language skills in the US are far lower than in most developed countries of the world. There are many reasons–all valid–why this is so, but there are other reasons–also valid–why it should be changed.

The Administration is also looking into the problem of visas: finding the right balance between security and openness. There is simply no better way to have a person understand a country than the ability of that person to live, work, study, or even visit that country.

Even 40 years ago, if you traveled around the world, you’d find middle school students in places like Thailand or Turkey studying English. Sure, it was to their future advantage to do so, but the fact is, they were doing it.

American middle schools in the 1960s were just introducing foreign languages (primarily Spanish and French), but these programs were few and far spread.

With the world becoming every more interdependent, it’s critical that Americans learn more languages, earlier. Not only does it permit doing business more effectively and efficiently, but it presents a window into other cultures’ values and ways of thinking that are crucial to political understanding.

Languages are far more than one-to-one correspondences of meaning. They also involve, at their very bases, different ways of seeing the world, organizing information, dealing with reality.

And while the “global languages” of Spanish and French are important (more important in some parts of the US than others), there are important languages spoken by large parts of the world’s population that are simply being ignored. Arabic, of course, is one of them.