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Foreign languages, Arkansas, and America's future
Largely forgotten but for its title, the 1958 novel, The Ugly American, vividly depicted, among other gaffes, the diplomatic and military consequences of ignorance of foreign languages. The ineffective overseas diplomats in the novel are not even aware that their inability to comprehend the language is a weakness. Our need to do better in foreign language instruction has not gone away. This century has notably seen a new term -- "critical need language" -- rise to crucial importance in national security. Moreover, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills reports in its study, Are They Really Ready to Work?, that over 60% of the employers surveyed see knowledge of foreign languages as "increasing in importance" more than any other basic skill. In a globalized economy and an increasingly diverse America, gaining at least intermediate level of skills in a second language is an imperative for undergraduate education.
Hence ACTA's profound concern about the plans, currently underway at the University of Arkansas, to eliminate the foreign language requirement and instead let individual departments decide whether to make the study of foreign language a requirement for their majors. This is the moment that tests academic leadership: the vision of a great institution would transcend departmental goals to ensure that undergraduates are prepared for 21st century America and the global competition they will face. Senator Fulbright would have winced at the contemporary witticism, "if you speak three languages, you're trilingual; if you speak two, you're bilingual; and if you only speak one language, you're American." That the college that bears his name now wants to be part of the problem by dropping the language requirement is tragic indeed.
Posted by Michael Poliakoff on June 15, 2010 at June 15, 2010 04:38 PM
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