Choice of language study

This article by Ray Verzasconi comes from the April 9th issue of SPECTRUM, the newsletter of COFLT (Confederation in Orgeon for Language Teaching). The push for implementation of Chinese language programs in public schools at the expense of other languages is short-sighted at best. Language study should not be dictated soley by economic or military rationales.


Some 30-35 years ago, a number of American economists, crunching the data that so intrigue them, predicted that Japan would become the world’s leading economic power by the year 2000. Didn’t happen did it?


Nowadays a new generation of American economists are predicting that China will become the world’s leading economic power by 2050 or so. Will it happen? Well, anything can happen. As Mark Twain said, “The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially when it relates to the future.”


The U.S.A. might sink into a really severe economic depression next week, leaving us all to grub for roots in order to survive, but then, since we have been the primary consumers of Chinese goods, China would sink with us. China now holds over $1 trillion in U.S. government bonds that, if we go bankrupt, would become so much useless paper. The 200 million or so Chinese who now enjoy middleclass comforts could revolt, along with the 800 million or so still struggling with poverty, setting the nation’s economy back to the Dark Ages. By 2050 India might be the world’s leading economic power or, for that matter, Brazil. Then again, global warming might cause such a dislocation in all nations that the term “leading economic power” might be meaningless.


My point is that neither economic development nor national security is in and of itself justification for the study of any language. Look at the maps on the previous page and tell me where the is logic in the decision of Reynolds High School to drop German in order to add Chinese or that of Catlin Gabel School to drop Japanese in order to add Chinese?


We’ve been there before. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several dozen high schools in Oregon dropped or sharply curtailed French, German or Spanish programs in order to offer Chinese or Japanese. Only a handful of the original Japanese programs survive; none of the Chinese programs. Both suffered from a shortage of qualified teachers and very high student attrition.


About the most ludicrous suggestion I have heard of late comes from David Porter. Mr. Porter has been lobbying various members of the Oregon legislature for over a year. He wants two years of Chinese to be required of all Oregon high school students, and he further wants the legislature to fund a one-month summer study program in China for all of them, insisting that after two years of high school with a one-month stay in China in between, they will all become “advanced” speakers.


One thing that continues to puzzle me is why the Confederation in Oregon for Language Teaching (COFLT) has never developed a language policy that it can handle legislators, school boards and other administrators every and any time someone starts going off on a tangent. I guess for the same reason that ACTFL never has – fear of alienating someone. Interestingly, it is the Modern Language Association (MLA), the “literature” association that represents mostly English and foreign language faculty in higher education that developed a policy over 15 years ago that, in fact, finds a home in the Oregon Road Map.


Yes, a language in addition to English should be part of every school curriculum starting with kindergarten, with an additional language and languages added in subsequent years for “the best and brightest.” And, yes, which language should indeed be left to the local educational agency. Which language really doesn’t matter.

At the same time, language learning takes too much time to keep switching languages in order to teach the langue du jour. COFLT needs to become proactive, not re-active. Once Catlin Gabel decides to drop Japanese or Reynolds High to drop German, a protest is futile.


A language, any language which, for some students will become a stepping stone to studying and learning another language or languages.


Languages for economic development or national security? By the time students really get to the “advanced” level (ACTFL definition), the language may have lost its economic or strategic importance.


At least Congress in recent years has not repeated the errors inherent in the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of the 1960s, which by default encouraged thousands of school districts nationwide to drop well-established language programs in order to add, hastily, new languages. Since 9/11 the federal government has significantly increased funding for foreign language and international studies programs, K-16 and beyond; but virtually all the programs have a qualifying clause: money will not be provided to start new language programs if, to do so, an existing language program will be dropped. We keep the programs we have and add to them.


Germany remains the world’s third largest economic power; add Austria to the mix; and after the current economic meltdown, its position is likely to be strengthened. Languages for national security? The biggest myth the language associations have helped propagate in the past 50 years is that we do not have enough people who are proficient in “critical languages” working in the federal government. Well, if the State Department, the FBI, CIA, NSI and the military intelligence agencies changed their policies on security clearances, positions would not go begging.


The more sensitive the position, the more thorough the background check in order to obtain a security clearance at a higher level. Guess what? The top security clearances virtually prohibit that anyone have friends and contacts among people who are not part of a country’s elite, and are not staunchly pro-American. Most of the language teachers I know (myself included) wouldn’t qualify.


How can anyone understand and respect people in other cultures if one restricts oneself to those who graduated from Harvard or Yale, speak English and are staunchly pro-American? How can we possibly know what “the street” thinks, especially in those countries with governments that censor the media? The paranoia dates back to the Jacksonian Revolution, the assumption being that anyone too friendly with the natives would “go over to the other side.”


That ideology is central to the long-standing dispute in the U.S. Department of State between “regionalists” and “internationalists.” Regionalists want Foreign Service officers to spend their entire careers in a specific region so they can become bilingual and bicultural; internationalists prefer to move people around to different parts of the world every two years or so; that way, they are less likely to become traitors. Internationalists are really a throwback to English imperialists. Ah, yes, not a few British diplomats in the 19th c. ended up gaining an appreciation of the “native” culture that they ended up denouncing certain imperialist practices.


Except for the Navy, the U.S. military pretty much follows the internationalists. The military spends millions of dollars every year training military personnel foreign languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, but if anyone becomes too proficient, he or she is not likely to be stationed very long in a nation where the foreign language is spoken. We had two top Army commanders and a number of lower-level officers in the Middle East at Level 2 (Advanced) or 3 (Superior) proficiency in Farsi before Bush II went to war against Iraq. Most were brought back to Washington D.C. and given dead-end desk jobs or shipped off to another part of the world. So military commanders had to depend on native translators and interpreters who didn’t always understand our language and culture that well.


The Navy is an exception. It has had a tendency in recent years to promote people with Level 2 and higher proficiency in a foreign language to the top ranks and to leave them serve in the same area for their entire career. The Navy apparently has an Admiral in the Pacific Fleet with Level 3 proficiency in Japanese.


A couple of high profile espionage cases in Great Britain in the 1950s also color the entire intelligence and military establishment attitudes toward gays. Of course, back when homosexuality was still a felony crime, gays could easily be blackmailed. Today? Still gays can forget about a career in the intelligence community, no matter if they are bilingual or trilingual. Gay language specialists remain high on the list of those being drummed out of the military.


Taken together, existing language policy as it relates to national security is contradictory. We know it takes a long time, even if we are highly motivated, to achieve a high level of proficiency in another language, and it takes even longer to develop a deep understanding of and respect for another culture – and one can’t possibly do the latter if one socializes only with Harvard-educated foreigners who come from a privileged class. It’s what led to the fiasco in Iran in 1979 and more recently in Iraq.


~Ray Verzasconi, editor

Spectrum 6 April 2009


1. For a recent case of inanity, see Bruce Falconer, “The FBI’s Least Wanted,” Mother Jones (May/June 2009), pp. 40-42 & p. 85. Again, establishment policy (or paranoia) creates a linguistic shortage in a critical language.