Editor’s Pick
OCTOBER 8, 2008 8:29PM
Why Learning Foreign Languages For Students Is Elitist
Like Fran Lebovitz, I also hate American kids who speak French. The notion that getting each American child to learn a foreign language is a good thing is hypocritical. It is often defended by appealing to the belief that knowledge of a foreign culture will undermine parochialism among Americans. Others defend it on multicultural grounds. If young Americans learn a foreign language, then the indifference that allegedly marks the American mind—a virtual axiom among the humanities professorate—will diminish over time.*
Let us be honest. We are talking about a few languages: Spanish, French, German, or Italian. Is the world going to be a better place, American kids more sensitized to the plight of the world's poor, by students learning another Western language? Among middle class professionals, Spanish is already seen as an easy language with low social prestige value--too many poor and working class folks speak it, they observe. Yet as someone who knows the language, its advanced grammar is more difficult than French.
People retain their parochialism regardless of the number of languages they know. The multi-lingual Germans (whose country I love deeply) have been absolutely horrible to the Turks living there. Because they lacked German ancestry, until recently most Turks, even those born in Germany, were disqualified from earning citizenship. Blood worship trumped a cosmopolitan commitment to equal rights.
The Dutch who are awesomely talented at languages are still disabled when it comes to the social integration of Moroccan citizens and residents in the Netherlands. Like many Germans, they too appear uninterested in truly understanding and embracing the cultures of their non-native residents.
Bilingual education as it is conceived cannot bring about the desired expanded consciousness of the world's poor and neglected because it is based on a Eurocentric emphasis on western languages.
If educators really wanted to promote inter-cultural global awareness, they ought to advocate the study of non-western languages. When was the last time you heard of any of them drafting curricular reforms mandating the study of Swahili, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, or even one of the several Native American languages home grown, spun and practiced right here on the myriad reservations? These languages lack social prestige, plain and simple. Very few will want to learn them because the social and monetary rewards in mastering them are disproportionate to the difficulty of achieving proficiency.
The June 10, 2002, edition of Time reports in an article “Tongues that Go Out of Style,” a call on linguists to take note of the world’s endangered languages. Some of these languages have only three speakers, such as Oro Win in Lowland Amazonia. Experts predict that by 2050, 50% of the world’s current languages will be extinct. Here is a brief compilation of some of the “endangered” languages: in Europe, Faeroese, which has around 50,000 speakers. Apparently this language is not under the protection of the European minority-language bureau because the Faeroe Islands do not belong to the European Union. Yiddish has been in decline since World War II. Sardinian, from the Italian island of Sardinia faces danger of extinction. In Australia, aboriginal languages such as Wanyi, Wakka Wakka and Kullilli are dying at a rate of one every three years. In the Middle East, Jesus’ native tongue of Aramaic boasts a measly 400,000 speakers. In China there is an earnest attempt to rescue the world’s only language for women, Nushu, from extinction. Pennsylvania German (or “Dutch”) has 85,000 speakers left. Several Native American languages are fading, as is Gulah, a tongue spoken by former slave descendents on small islands off South Carolina and Georgia. Piraha, another Lowland Amazonian tongue in South America, has 300 speakers left in North America.Authentic multiculturalism anyone?
As for academics in philology and classics departments who revive the idea of teaching Latin and ancient Greek in high school, only necrophiliacs would dream of burdening students with dead languages for which there is no concomitant emotional sphere in which to socialize, dream, and engage your humanity. The Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger got one thing right: language is the house of being. What happens to the being—the human center—of kids who are force-fed a diet of dead words they have no human way of exercising emotionally? The study of Latin is an intellectually and emotionally crippling exercise. There are no opportunities for conversing in it because it is no longer a spoken language.
American kids do not need to become bilingual. They need to be reached out to in their own language and assisted in recognizing their disowned voices first. Forget about devoting precious moral energy to AIDS education in America! In this age of cheap condoms those who get the disease from unprotected sex—such as the current crop of under twenty-five daredevil bare-backers who've never known a soul to die from AIDS—are carrying out unconscious death wishes. Alienation, stress, and social anxiety are the epidemics afflicting and killing the hearts of our American kids.
Let us be honest. We are talking about a few languages: Spanish, French, German, or Italian. Is the world going to be a better place, American kids more sensitized to the plight of the world's poor, by students learning another Western language? Among middle class professionals, Spanish is already seen as an easy language with low social prestige value--too many poor and working class folks speak it, they observe. Yet as someone who knows the language, its advanced grammar is more difficult than French.
People retain their parochialism regardless of the number of languages they know. The multi-lingual Germans (whose country I love deeply) have been absolutely horrible to the Turks living there. Because they lacked German ancestry, until recently most Turks, even those born in Germany, were disqualified from earning citizenship. Blood worship trumped a cosmopolitan commitment to equal rights.
The Dutch who are awesomely talented at languages are still disabled when it comes to the social integration of Moroccan citizens and residents in the Netherlands. Like many Germans, they too appear uninterested in truly understanding and embracing the cultures of their non-native residents.
Bilingual education as it is conceived cannot bring about the desired expanded consciousness of the world's poor and neglected because it is based on a Eurocentric emphasis on western languages.
If educators really wanted to promote inter-cultural global awareness, they ought to advocate the study of non-western languages. When was the last time you heard of any of them drafting curricular reforms mandating the study of Swahili, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, or even one of the several Native American languages home grown, spun and practiced right here on the myriad reservations? These languages lack social prestige, plain and simple. Very few will want to learn them because the social and monetary rewards in mastering them are disproportionate to the difficulty of achieving proficiency.
The June 10, 2002, edition of Time reports in an article “Tongues that Go Out of Style,” a call on linguists to take note of the world’s endangered languages. Some of these languages have only three speakers, such as Oro Win in Lowland Amazonia. Experts predict that by 2050, 50% of the world’s current languages will be extinct. Here is a brief compilation of some of the “endangered” languages: in Europe, Faeroese, which has around 50,000 speakers. Apparently this language is not under the protection of the European minority-language bureau because the Faeroe Islands do not belong to the European Union. Yiddish has been in decline since World War II. Sardinian, from the Italian island of Sardinia faces danger of extinction. In Australia, aboriginal languages such as Wanyi, Wakka Wakka and Kullilli are dying at a rate of one every three years. In the Middle East, Jesus’ native tongue of Aramaic boasts a measly 400,000 speakers. In China there is an earnest attempt to rescue the world’s only language for women, Nushu, from extinction. Pennsylvania German (or “Dutch”) has 85,000 speakers left. Several Native American languages are fading, as is Gulah, a tongue spoken by former slave descendents on small islands off South Carolina and Georgia. Piraha, another Lowland Amazonian tongue in South America, has 300 speakers left in North America.Authentic multiculturalism anyone?
As for academics in philology and classics departments who revive the idea of teaching Latin and ancient Greek in high school, only necrophiliacs would dream of burdening students with dead languages for which there is no concomitant emotional sphere in which to socialize, dream, and engage your humanity. The Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger got one thing right: language is the house of being. What happens to the being—the human center—of kids who are force-fed a diet of dead words they have no human way of exercising emotionally? The study of Latin is an intellectually and emotionally crippling exercise. There are no opportunities for conversing in it because it is no longer a spoken language.
American kids do not need to become bilingual. They need to be reached out to in their own language and assisted in recognizing their disowned voices first. Forget about devoting precious moral energy to AIDS education in America! In this age of cheap condoms those who get the disease from unprotected sex—such as the current crop of under twenty-five daredevil bare-backers who've never known a soul to die from AIDS—are carrying out unconscious death wishes. Alienation, stress, and social anxiety are the epidemics afflicting and killing the hearts of our American kids.
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wendyo
Kevin Abel
Red Star
ronnierayjenkins
Mark Pritchard
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Salon.com
Comments
It seems you are arguing more about a Eurocentric emphasis more than anything else. This is a good discussion, especially pertaining to the study of philosophy where the focus is mostly on the Western tradition. One of our problems may be that most of our students aren't that interested in the humanities. If we have a society whose primary motivation for learning is making money then where are we? Thank you for the post.
I think this is an outstanding post, although as a writer, I have to disagree with you about languages. I get what you're saying, and I agree, students are facing issues that are much more life-sapping than the ones we're dealing with, but let me tell you why I think learning other languages is important.
I'm fluent in French, and also learned Italian and Latin. What I have found is that knowing those languages has enriched my English. When I use words, I frequently know their etymology, their origins, which language they came from, and so, for me, in writing what I do, I can carefully choose to say something that resonates because of where it came from.
I know that many people don't give a shit about language. Oh well. But for me, it has added substance to my life.
My eldest daughter is fluent in French. She has discovered a love of languages, and is now making a list of other languages she wants to learn: Swedish (because that's where her father's people are from), Russian (because she continues to believe that Russia will be a factor in our diplomacy for years to come), and Chinese (because it is the language of so many people in the world. She talked about the thrill of being in Paris and having people from Sweden in line behind her at an art exhibit. She spoke Swedish to them, and she felt that barriers were broken down.
Yes. It's elitist. Many people will never have the chance to travel, but I make no apologies for the fact that I have gone into debt in order to travel rather than to buy "things." I want to see the world, and I want to talk to people in their language, not mine. I have taken my children to foreign countries, and I hope to be able to do more of it. My eldest, who begins college next year, has already decided on a major that will combine her love of the wilderness and her concerns about world politics.
We are a nation that is hurting. Our children are growing up in a culture of darkness and they need so many things that we are not supplying to them. Maybe languages are an unneccessary expense, but if we cut off languages, where do we go next? Do we stop teaching philosophy? Or literature? Isn't there something to be said for filling up the soul with things that keep us company even when we don't have enough to eat or are living on the street?
This is an incredibly provocative post, and i hope it gets lots of discussion going. thanks for the morning wake up.
Helping students nurture a love for language and an appreciation for the ways in which it reflects and extends the cultures from which its many variants derive is a noble pursuit - calling something elitist has become the go-to pejorative of the modern, media-drenched era - and I believe every student can broaden his or her mind and horizons by inquiring into the mysteries of their native tongue (especially) as well as into those of foreign languages, both dead and alive.
As a student of Buddhism, I wish I could read sutras and texts in the original Pali or Sanskrit. As one contemplating an eventual relocation to Greece, I'm excited about the possibility of one day reading some of the foundational texts of Western civilization in the original Greek. As a resident of San Francisco, I have found it immeasurably useful and enriching to know a smattering of conversational Spanish and Mandarin. As a lover of language itself, I find the two years I spent hating Latin in High School to have actually been quite useful in the end.
There is plenty wrong with our educational approach in America, but encouraging the study of foreign languages is among the least of our problems.
In the US, we are already geographically isolated. It's hard for us to see that there are other countries. One might reasonably argue, as you do, that multiple languages don't serve some countries well. But those countries you cite are small enough that you can easily drive to a country that speaks something else, so growing up you are at no risk of thinking the world is homogenous. A big problem in the US is that it's easy to perceive the world as all the same just because we don't run into others. Language learning somewhat serves to compensate for geographically-motivated political isolationism that isn't a luxury in other countries.
Also, the learning of two languages may perpetuate battles between local groups that are sparring for turf using language as their refuge; there may be a qualitative difference between learning a language from far away and one from locally. Understanding the purpose of teaching the language can lead you in the right choice. Languages serve purposes and you can't discuss it as an entirely abstract thing.
In the end it seems like you're making an economic argument, that we're too poor to afford to engage in language learning. That's not saying language learning is elitist. Elitism and wealth are different.
So I think the realization that western languages are not the only languages worth learning is already underway in the American education system. It may take 10 years or so to shake out. And lonnie's point is well-taken, that language is not just about learning to communicate with other cultures, but learning to use the part of your brain that uses foreign languages. Growing up bilingual or even trilingual creates synapse connections in the brain that benefit kids with other things besides just language.
And yes, there is plenty of ethnic hate to go around. The Greeks hat the Turks and vice-versa. Ask any Korean how they feel about the Chinese. Rwanda anyone? Any time you can get a kid to understand that culture is a construct, even if it is using a not-so-unfamiliar western european culture, you increase the likelihood that they will think outside the box better. It's not perfect. But we're not capable of perfect. We try to stack the odds as best we can with what we got when it comes to education.
Like Fran Lebovitz, I also hate American kids who speak French.
I hope that this is tongue-in-cheek and deliberately provocative. Otherwise, good to know you hate my kids, even though you've never met them and have no idea the reasons behind them learning or knowing French. oh well.
My kids went to a public French Immersion elementary school. Would I have preferred a Spanish, Chinese or Japanese? Sure, but the French one was the one that was less than a mile from my house.
As far as the cognitive benefits, I addressed that with others in Matthew DeCoursey's excellent post Learning Languages...
As far as the social, cultural benefits, I don't know whether my kids are more open-minded simply for having taken French. I do know that they:
- have had true African, African-American, and other cultural role models that their English-only peers have not. My kids have had as teachers dark-skinned, heavily-accented teachers from: Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Senegal, Camaroon, as well as white and ambiguous race teachers from America, Canada and the islands
- have sat side-by-side in school with kids whose families have recently emigrated from African nations, as well as mixed-race, mixed-heritage kids with one Anglo-American parent and one African, European, St. Lucian or Canadian parent. Other kids who did not speak English at all coming into Kindergarten.
- are more interested in and better at learning foreign languages than their peers. Mine are currently taking Spanish in school. My 9 yo son wants to get Rosetta Stone because he is frustrated that it is so slow and next, he wants to learn Japanese because it has a different alphabet.
Are they elitist? Are we? perhaps. but it is hard to argue when their best friends are kids whose parents are Honduran and speak very little English.
Further, I don't see how getting kids to see people who are different than they does a moral disservice to anyone nor that it diverts precious resources from AIDS eduction.
I am confident that my kids are much less likely to NOT vote for someone because Hussein is his middle name or because he/she happens to be gay than, say, these folks in Ohio.
See
Mc-Cain/Palin - getting their message out
I do agree that these languages are over-emphasized and not by any means the most useful out there for every child. I would be very happy to see public schools teach more than just primarily Spanish and French, although even those can both be useful. Want to do charitable work in Haiti or the DRC? French will help, although I'm sure you'll have to pick up some local dialect. Want to work in any kind of service industry in the southwest US? Speaking Spanish will help your resume out considerably. But to say that learning a language only makes sense for cultural or job reasons would be like saying that we should abolish band because few students continue playing after graduation.
Does it absolutely prevent racism, nationalism or anything else? No. Is there one particular language every child should learn? No. But to call learning Latin "crippling"? You might as well call learning grammar crippling. It's not necessarily about the ability to hold a conversation, but gaining access to our own language and its history. The fact that English is of a Western European origin tends to make those languages more valuable in that aspect. When most kids won't end up fluent by the time they graduate or continue after graduation, I think there's something to be said for going in the direction that will give them the most additional knowledge of the language they will keep speaking for the rest of their lives.
(note: I have little faith that this chart will come out in the post)
SAT Scores
Studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service show that Latin students consistently outperform all other students on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Latin 647 651 662 665 665 666 672 674
All Students 505 505 505 505 506 504 507 508
French 623 627 632 636 633 637 638 642
German 624 617 623 621 625 622 626 627
Spanish 581 583 590 589 583 581 575 575
Hebrew 629 634 636 623 628 629 628 630
1997-2004 Taken from Tables 7-3 & 7-4 in College-Bound Seniors — A Profile of SAT Program Test Takers.
One could argue that the SAT is elitist and that there are pre-determinants that would allow those kids to score better anyway. My point is this...
I studied Spanish for 3 years in High School at an all-girls high school in New Orleans. My male peers at the Jesuit school up the street studied Latin and Greek for five years. Other than that, our curricula were pretty similar. I had decent PSAT and ACT scored and graduated in the top 5 of my class and was wait-listed at UVa, but received a scholarship from a small school in TX.
The Jesuit boys I knew went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, UVa, UNC, Texas, Vanderbilt, Rice, Texas A&M, Washington U., American, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Georgia, Tenn, UPenn, MIT, Tulane, Loyola, LSU, and a host of other top schools. The Dominican girls went to Texas, LSU, Tulane, Trinity, Sewanee, UNO, SMU, Ole Miss, and Spring Hill. I'm sure there are a few others but that's pretty much it.
Were there factors other than language playing into the discrepancy? I am sure. (and one day I will write a post on separate, but equal gender education) Our school was pretty much LSU-prep when it said college-prep, and it was among the best college prep HS in the city.
Does my argument and citing SAT scores play into your elitist argument? Probably.
But, it is a difficult argument for you to make that the study of languages such as Latin and Greek intellectually crippled those boys. And it is SAT scores that still count for alot in college admissions for most kids. Even more so today.
Would I prefer kids be mandated to spend a semester or year doing field work in underdeveloped countries or in under-served parts of this country than studying languages? Sure. But, in the current test, test, test academic environment, I hardly think that the study of languages is our worst crime.
Honky please!
"American kids do not need to become bilingual."
This is well-written intellectual blather. Americans are being left behind the world's economy because of inadequate 2d language skills. So you decide the problem is well-off kids learning French?
Jason, your xenophobia and elitism are showing...
I'm not ragging here on anyone who is mono-lingual, many of whom have superb minds nontheless, but I contend each and everyone of those would have benefited mentally and materially from a 2nd language.
I appreciate the opportunity, tho, to respond to your POV. Cheers!
French words: study, Latin, intellectually, emotionally, exercise, opportunity, conversing, longer, language
English words: the, of, is, in, an, and, crippling, there, are, no, for, it, because, spoken
Romance languages, not romantic, derived from Roman, i.e., Latin. These languages are dialects of Latin and after many years they have evolved to modern languages. Latin teaches you many things about history, law, religion, Eurasia (center of the Roman Empire in 324 was Constantinople, aka, Istanbul), Africa, etc. Every French word identified is a Latin word. Latin is spoken today in every Romance language.
After many hundreds of years, a language changes. We speak English, yet few can understand Middle English, let alone Old English. Modern English came about because of a renewed interest in Classical languages – the Renaissance – and the sudden influx of foreigners into London. American English is a “frozen” dialect of 17th Century English: trash instead of rubbish, fall instead of autumn.
Language changes daily. I write "judgement" because that was the way it was spelled 30 years ago, now I am told that it is "judgment". "Judgement at Nuremberg" was made in 1962.
You are correct in that Spanish is more difficult than French, but did you stop to ask why? It is because half the English language is French. In 1066 the Normans, (from Normandy, France), conquered England and ruled for nearly 300 years. Notice how there are often two words for many things? Rock = stone, beef = steer.
I learned French because, hey, Vancouver was less than an hour away and I heard radio shows in French and Sesame Street was in French, not Spanish. I also learned Latin because I was interested. I learned Japanese because the sound of it fascinated me. I know more than a few words in many other languages because I was interested in the people around me and the rest of the world. America is not an island nation and shouldn't pretend to be one.
Yes, let's be honest about foreign languages. In my neighborhood, my neighbors speak Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, German, Estonian, Hindi, Pakistani, Miao, Japanese, Korean, French, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, several Arabic languages, Norwegian and Spanish. I almost never hear Spanish and I live in San Jose, California. I just got my voting materials. They are offered in these languages, in this order: English, Chinese, Spanish, Filipino and Vietnamese.
Learning a foreign language will teach you more about your own language and culture than just studying yourself.
The idea of compartmentalizing a learner's knowledge is ludicrous. To say that "American kids do not need to become bilingual. They need to be reached out to in their own language and assisted in recognizing their disowned voices first" is not only culturally biased, it implies that learners cannot multi-task. Which do we choose? Math or English? History or biology? How do you prioritize when there are so many disowned voices crying to be heard?
My knee-jerk response was (and still is) that this is more myopic French-bashing. It just sounds gussied up when spoken in pseudo-intellectual Academese, a language I myself wish I had never had to learn.
I was born into a blue-collar redneck family in Tennessee. I didn't begin foreign language study until high school (when it's widely regarded to be too late to gain true fluency). French fascinated me, and taxed parts of my brain that had remained theretofore untapped. I developped fluency in French. Hate away. I also speak credible Spanish (which is categorically far-and-away more straightforward, less irregular, and less complex on almost every grammatical and morphological level than French, contrary to Prof. Hill's argument), passable German, laughable Portuguese and Italian and I can get the gist of most Latin I read. I can appreciate the logic of Montaigne, or the stark power of Borges, or the beauty of Baudelaire's imagery in the original language. In Prof. Hill's mind, no doubt, the mention of these canonical authors makes me an elitist.
So why is it that in American culture, we only prize elitism when it doesn't matter? We want our athletes, our entertainers, our consumer goods and the like to be the absolute best in the world. But when we start talking about depth of thought, breadth of knowledge or vastness of experience, any excellence or pursuit of a broader worldview is condemned as elitism? Why is being elite a bad thing once we leave the confines of Kelly Clarkson and Kobe Bryant?
Prof. Hill's condemnation of foreign language learning is worse than parochial, it's jingoistic. It's the same worldview that thinks the sublimely more logical metric system is a bad idea. Like it or not, the days when Americans can expect everyone else in the world to cowtow to our way of doing things is nearing an end. China will be the dominant world power in the 21st century, and an appreciation of its and other Asian cultures and languages will serve our children well. So while I agree that there has been a cultural bias in linguistic education toward Western languages (his only truly salient point), I take great exception to the idea that there is anything elitist about learning about other world cultures and their languages: in today's global village, it's the only responsible thing to do.
where, exactly, do we expect to get the native-speaking teachers to teach our children
Swahili, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, or even one of the several Native American languages that are suggested?
there is Chinese immersion here in Montgomery County, MD, but it tends to be primarily Chinese kids in it as it is at only one school. It has been extremely difficult to get qualified French teachers for the French immersion program.
I don't know of anyone else who may have published the views I have at all. When I publish scholarly works, my work, on some level accords with that of my peers since I am working within a tradition--the western one I proudly defend in my classroom. Also when I said I hated American kids who spoke French, of course I was speaking tongue-in-cheek--rhetorical flourishes to underscore a point. But contrary to what you say, I don't want the arts taken away. I want more money invested in non-western languages. I am not a relatavist, nor will you find anyone more devoted to the western canon than I am. I did a Ph.D in western philosophy.
But see my response on this post for a clarification of my position.
Thanks for your response
If your point was, "we need more emphasis in non-Western languages and culture," then say that. Your title alone, "Why Learning Foreign Languages For Students Is Elitist," you refute yourself in a later comment: "I am most emphatically not against foreign languages."
You also shouldn't make inflammatory statements you don't really believe. Although I doubted seriously that you actually hated kids who take French, that's what you said, and in this medium, we have only your words to analyze.
Your arguments are nonethless flawed, starting with the idea that there is necessarily some honorable higher calling (your words in your comments are "the alleged goal of humility and awareness") to learning a foreign language. Most people who learn foreign languages, both here in the USA and worldwide, do so for pragmatic, utilitarian purposes. Culture is usually infused by instructors to make the process more interesting and multifaceted. But the vast majority of people in Thailand who learn English do so with the idea of getting a good job, not because they're nutty about McDonald's and rock-and-roll.
Same story here. Spanish, which you deride as somehow less worthy even as you boast about your proficiency in it, will be concurrent with English as the everyday language of the USA by the dawn of 22nd century, if not before. I personally live in a multiethnic neighborhood with a high predominance of Latinos, and I use Spanish every single day. I'm glad I know it, and I see ads in the paper and online all the time appealing to skilled professionals with proficiency in Spanish. To say that "Spanish is already seen as an easy language with low social prestige value" is forcing your preconceived elitism on middle-class professionals, many of whom have "padded their résumé" out of expediency with this alleged second-rate language.
My argument is basic Jaussian reader-response theory. I think you see what you initially wanted to see in foreign language students, and I am every bit as much a victim of it in my criticism of your essay. We start out with a horizon of expectations and fall into the hermeneutic circle. My horizon of expectations was your profession, your essay title and your initial argument, and that set me off. There was little that would retrieve my impression from that point.
Prof Hill.... no-- Jason... I'll shift my address. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
You may call me Jason any day. I reserve the title of professor or Dr. only for my students. When I said I hated American students who speak French I was speaking tongue-in-cheek-- a rhetorical and dramatic flourish to underscore a point, as with the provocative title. This is not scholarship. I was trained as a journalist before I got a Ph.D in philosophy so I stand by what I write.
I do not deride Spanish. It is the language of my grand-father, I love it deeply and spent years studying it as I have French. I lived in Peru for months working among poor, disbaled children and speaking to them respectfully in their language; but I stand my ground that it is regarded as a low prestige language. This is based on my perception.
De Paul has never had a problem either with my scholarly work (it gave me tenure) or with my journalistic writings, radio and television appearances. It does not monitor the activities of its faculty at all but, rather, sees intellectual diversity and style as part of the natural make-up of the institution. I say this since you remind me that I am representing De Paul. My Dean, colleagues etc all read my blogs from time to time and encourage me and other faculty who blog regularly. I don't know why you would seek to remind me I am a representative of De Paul; your presuppose I must agree with your assessment of my work.
Finally, it really is the case that educators and multiculturalists promote the idea that learning a foreign language will increase cultural awareness and lessens jingoism among students. My point, once more, was that if we are talking about studying western languages, then this is not going to happen.
Thanks for your comments and now I shall read some of your posts since you have piqued my curiosity. I started blogging on Open Salon only a few weeks ago but I have about 5 or so posts including a short story.
If you don't mind perhaps I might cut and paste this response on to the comment page.
"I am sorry, when the motive for studying a language (as is the identical case with volunteer work) is primarily to boost one's resume, when it is a western laguage that one is studying, then the alleged goal of humility and awareness take a backseat."
I've never put on any resume that I know any foreign languages. My resumes are specific for the job I'm going for - e.g., film - it's all about my film skills. I've been asked if I speak Spanish, sure, (I live in the West - 8 yrs Arizona, 8 yrs California), I say no, but I can understand quite a bit of it. And I'm a phenomenal charade communicator.
Also, Western languages traveled the world while working the commercial empires. That is the reason one learns Western languages over Chinese. You can go farther with English and French than you can with Chinese and Tagalog. If Germany had been working the colonial issue the way the French, Dutch, Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese had, we'd be learning German.
I believe that even if one takes a foreign language for the resume, they will still become more aware of the world at large. I've never heard the "humility" bit before, it's always been touted as a way to broaden the mind.
I'd love your feedback on my posts. Thanks for writing, reading, commenting, and responding. Cheers!
What I think kids should be learning is world history their senior and junior year and not spend a year on the Civil War. Slavery was wrong. The north beat the south. Lincoln gave a speech and got shot. A lot of people died. Why waste a year on every colonel and their skirmishes? History is more than warfare. It is Greco Roman politics and architecture, the magna carta, various art and literature. Why the world considers history a collection of stories about politicians and generals I don't know. These are people with more influence than ideas. History should be science and art and literature as well as war.
As for languages, I only speak one. But there's a joke they tell in other countries. What do you call someone that speaks three languages? Trilingual. What about two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone that speaks one language? An American.
Learning more than one language is a study in linguistics and communication. Idioms, how they differ, how they are the same. The roots of languages. Differences in tense, gender, etc. The stories sayings are taken from. The attitude that accompanies expressions and words. I wish I did more than learn a little French and German.