Right Plan, Wrong Reason
Yesterday, President Bush announced a plan to expand the learning of foreign languages in this country through a National Security Language Initiative which will create incentives to teach foreign language and increase number of foreign language teachers and resources for them.
*my two favorite quotes from his speech:
1)"When Americans...learn to speak Arabic, those in the Arabic region will say, gosh, America is interested in us. They care enough to learn how we speak." (I asked my Egyptian co-worker how to say "gosh" in Arabic. Surprisingly, there is no translation)
2) "We're going to teach our kids how to speak important languages" (whew, what a relief, I was scared we were going to shell out a bunch of money to teach our kids the "unimportant languages")
While I applaud any program trying to increase the number of students learning a foreign language, I am slightly uncomfortable with the rationale of learning another language to 'protect America and kill terrorists'.
Becoming bilingual increases one's tolerance and ability to communicate with people. Children who are in bilingual programs tend to score higher on proficiency tests than those who are monolingual. We are a country that is becoming increasingly multilingual, where around 5 million children speak a native language other than English.
We should be learning languages because we want to be part of a global community where we treat other cultures and countries equally, not because we want to train the next generation of "young soldiers on the front lines to find...killers."
update: Edwahoo just posted about this also...although he sees it in a more positive light
2 Comments:
-
We were talking about this at lunch-- do you think there's demand for "defense languages" at the elementary school level? The government boosting funding for the teaching of strategic languages is nothing new; they paid for people to learn Russian in the Cold War. But it never filtered down to the elementary level, or even really to the HS level for that matter.
By
I just wonder how many parents are going to select their kindergartener into a dual-immersion Arabic program, especially if it continues to be sold as a “national defense” initiative. I can't quite pin my finger on what exactly it is, but something feels a little unsavory about starting to train the next generation of terrorist fighters so young... the diplomacy/good world citizen tack is, as Emily says, more persuasive.
I agree that more foreign language is a good thing, though. Definitely so.
A bit off-topic, but my favorite gem from that speech: “Condi said, come on by, we've got a bunch of university presidents here. And I said, great, just so long as we don't have to compare transcripts. (Laughter.) She's the Ph.D., I'm the President.”
NMD, at January 06, 2006 5:15 PM
-
jennifer, that sadly does not surprise me...
By
Nicole, i so loved that quote...oh there were just so many good one-liners in that speech, it provides hours of entertainment
"We're facing an ideological struggle, and we're going to win. Our idealogy is a heck of a lot more hopeful than theirs"
Heck is just such a powerful presidential word... KF, at January 06, 2006 5:44 PM
<< Home
from: :: permalink
