"Foreign language learning is not something that
happens overnight; it takes a commitment of time and money. U.S.
schools compound the problem by waiting too long to start foreign
language instruction. According to ACTFL Professional Programs Director
Elvira Swender, U.S. students often start learning foreign languages at
puberty, "an age at which their brains are least receptive to language
learning." Swender also notes the relative unimportance that schools
assign to languages. "It doesn't occur to anyone that we should wait to
teach students math," she points out, "so why do we wait with foreign
languages?"
Why has America always had this love-hate
relationship with learning a second language? What is it that Americans
seem to fear in the acquisition of a second language-a fear so great
that they will resort to English Only legislative efforts to assure
that their children are not brutalized by the introduction of a foreign
language in their schools.
"Why pass laws to repress
"bilingualism," a resource that competitors are trying to conserve and
exploit?" ("...brutalize our schools with their language..."-Frosty
Wooldridge, an anti-Mexican xenophobe and Minuteman Project supporter)
There
is a real and unacknowledged fear of foreigners in the American
culture. I see this all the time in the people I talk to. I am a
syndicated columnist and book author who is constantly deluged with
readers' comments--some not so nice. I get a sense from the hundreds of
column readers' responses I receive that not only is Xenoglossophobia
(The Fear of Foreign Languages) a real problem but Xenophobia in
general is alive and well in America.
At the writing of this
story, the Minuteman Project movement is growing by leaps and bounds.
This will, in my view, cause an even large isolationism from Mexico.
Maybe America will even go back to the days when learning a foreign
language will be outlawed or at least dropped from every school's
curriculum all together. Anything is possible. Stranger things have
happened.
In Europe, there is a bilingual rate of about 52%
compared to America's 9% rate. The reason for this is, in Europe, one
has to learn foreign languages just to survive. Where I live, in
Guanajuato, Mexico, I constantly meet Europeans who are fluent, to some
degree, in multiple languages. They are multilingual because they live
in such close proximity to other countries that have a language
different than their own.
If Nebraska had one language and Kansas
another, there would be many Nebraskans and Kansans who would speak one
another's languages. Their close proximity would necessitate the
learning of one another's languages.
Americans simply have never
had to learn another language, unlike their European counterparts.
Language inability deprives one of the opportunities to learn of
another culture. That is the breeding ground for ignorance and
fear-Xenoglossophia. Nor do American school systems start teaching
other languages to children in the very earliest years of their formal
education, as do their European cousins. One, however, should not
underestimate the issue of need. Americans have simply never had to
learn another language to conduct their affairs in life, as have other
citizens of the world.
NEXT: Why Acquire a Second Language?
