It is not an exaggeration to declare that the United
States of America could be the only country in the world where one can
graduate from high school and even college without taking one course of
foreign language study. Of those few schools which still require their
students to take a foreign language to graduate, the one or two years
of foreign language study is woefully inadequate for developing a high
degree of spoken fluency. As America crossed into the 21st century, a
bilingual rate of less than 9% prevailed. That rate is still true in
2005.
As early as 1979, a Presidential Commission on Foreign Languages revealed that,
"American's incompetence in foreign language is nothing short of scandalous..."
Some 26 years later, that "scandal" is still raging in America.
Second
language acquisition in the public school system has always suffered
from the prevailing political and educational ideology of the times.
During the first 100 years of America's history, America was a
multilingual society-a fact almost too hard to believe in light of
today's bilingual deficit. Although xenophobic tendencies were always
hiding in a bush somewhere ready to jump out, there were no legislative
efforts to control the teaching and practice of foreign language
education.
In the infancy of our country, immigrants, and their
offspring managed to maintain their native tongue while learning
English. Americans and those with English as their first language hired
private tutors to learn a foreign language. Many Americans could make
this effort today but do not. To develop proficiency in a foreign
language was seen by our early fellow-Americans as a valuable skill and
indicative of an educated person. Sadly, this is not so in modern times.
In
the 1800's, due to the large immigrant influx into the United States,
private foreign language study began to be replaced by public schools
in order to meet the needs of the immigrant groups.
By the
beginning of the 1900´s, there was a major effort to establish foreign
language instruction in all levels of public education and to establish
standards governing these programs. This effort, an amazing and
outstanding thing considering modern "English Only" movements in
America, was to be sadly short-circuited.
By the beginning of the
20th century, a high level of xenophobia was reigning in America. World
War I was primarily responsible for outlawing the speaking of any
language other than English. Foreign language newspapers and foreign
language programs in the public schools were abolished.
A new
nationalism-a kind of populism-emerged for the sake of national unity.
Foreign language instruction was irrationally seen as a threat to
national unity--a condition not unlike what we are seeing in 2006 in
the English Only movements.
Before 1923, twenty-two states in
America had laws prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages. The
Supreme Court overturned this silliness in 1923. However, by 1954, 56%
of U.S. high schools did not even have foreign language courses
available to their students. Of those that did, only 14.2% of the
students were enrolled in foreign language study. This was due to
America's abnormal fear (xenophobia) of the strange or foreign as
applied to foreign languages. By World War II, America was ill prepared
linguistically to conduct the war. America's military had to play
catch-up with the rest of the world by developing effective language
learning methods almost overnight.
By the early 1970's, the
slight improvement in public schools' offerings of foreign language
programs once again suffered a decline. This was probably due to
reduced funding for the programs. Second-language illiterate parents
and school administrations made ill-informed decisions to cut funding
thinking that foreign language learning did not benefit the students.
Elementary
school foreign language acquisition programs disappeared. Foreign
language entrance requirements were abolished at some universities.
When
the early 1980´s rolled around, a small resurgence in second language
learning occurred but progress was limited. Though studies and reports
abounded on why America needed to become competent in foreign
languages, only a small number of states had programs in the elementary
levels. Most of those were spearheaded locally.
Any modern
improvements today are constantly in danger of elimination by
nationalist neo-populist, English Only groups. They view Mexican
immigrants as brutalizing your children's public school's English
education with their native Spanish.
In a 2002 story by Patrik
Jonsson, published in The Christian Science Monitor, he reported that
the states of Georgia, New Jersey, and the school district in Denver,
Colorado, either had waived or were in the process of eliminating the
foreign language requirement for high school graduation. I contacted
all of these school districts. Only Denver responded. The
representative said,
"I have checked with several counselors. At
this time, we cannot think of any district in Colorado that requires
Foreign Language (particularly in the Metro area). That's not to say
there isn't a small district somewhere that requires it."
PART TWO - Solving the Problem
