Foreign language instruction in the U.S. may not be dying, but it’s taken some real kicks in the shins in recent years. West Virginia University recently decided to dissolve its Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics; the school is keeping its Spanish and Chinese classes but eliminating majors in those subjects.
Enrollment in foreign language classes declined 17 percent over five years; accelerating a decline that began about a decade ago. About 491,000 fewer students are taking a foreign language class in 2021 compared to 2009. And surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Education does not have any innovative world languages program for elementary and secondary students.
And yet the demand for Americans who speak languages besides English is increasing, not decreasing – not just in the usual fields like international business, diplomacy, intelligence analysis and the military, but also cops, emergency workers, medical professionals and social workers who need to be able to speak to immigrant communities.
Whether or not you think recent immigrants and migrants should speak more English, it does not change the fact that significant numbers do not, and the need to communicate with these individuals isn’t going anywhere.
One survey indicated ninety percent of employers say they need employees who can speak more than one language. Princeton professor Rory Truex recently lamented that “our education system is not generating enough American citizens with Chinese language ability, meaningful lived experiences in China and deep area knowledge.” Free clinics in New York, courtrooms in Oklahoma, public schools in Connecticut, and workplace inspection offices in California – throw a stone and you’ll probably hit an institution that needs more multilingual workers.
And in the middle of a 118th Congress that is only slightly less fiercely divided than the Thunderdome from the Mad Max movies, there’s one little bipartisan effort to move the ball in the right direction.
Fourteen years ago, the Department of Education stopped issuing grants for K-12 world language and dual language education. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, Democrat of California, along with his fellow Golden State Democrat Julia Brownley and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, want to restart the program again. As envisioned under their bill, World Language Education Assistance Program would not be a particularly big or elaborate grant program – just $15 million per fiscal year. It just tells the Department of Education to identify programs that are getting good results, and to give those programs the resources to expand, or put together to develop a new program, based on the success of existing programs.
If America’s foreign language instruction has a home district, it’s Panetta’s. Home to the Pentagon’s Defense Language Institute, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies among other institutions; former Democratic congressman Sam Farr wrote that one assessment determined Monterey was “home to more language-related business, study, testing and use than any other region in the world.” Back in 1995, then-California Governor Pete Wilson proclaimed Monterey as “The Language Capital of the World” and the city hosts a Language Capital of the World Cultural Festival.
“As the U.S. representative for that area and co-chair of the America’s Languages Caucus in Congress, my job is not only to promote my community’s foreign language institutions, but also to perpetuate our country’s opportunities for foreign language education,” Panetta said. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen American students fall far behind in language skills, which can have a serious impact on their future prospects as well as our national economy and security. Even as we become more connected and globalized, most U.S. companies can’t find employees with language skills other than English.”
Panetta’s Republican cosponsor, Fitzpatrick, wants to get more kids into studying foreign languages, to have more fluent adults down the road.
“U.S. employers face a significant gap in foreign language skills, and to close this gap, we must encourage world language education and dual language programs in K-12 education,” Fitzpatrick said. “I’m hopeful that our colleagues will join us in this effort to support students, educators, and employers, as well as improve world language inclusion in education.”
Since this current House of Representatives took its oath of office one year ago, it has mostly been defined by unprecedented leadership fights, dysfunction and partisan division. The World LEAP proposal is one little bipartisan effort to do a bit of good.
There’s no button to press to quickly generate more multilingual American workers. Lots of young people have fun with DuoLingo and other apps that game-ify language learning, but it can’t replace a teacher or immersion. Google Translate has its uses, but you don’t want it translating, say, U.S. immigration asylum applications, never mind complicated life-saving health care instructions.
No one thinks that a $15 million-per-year pre-college grant program will alleviate America’s dearth of multilingual workers overnight. But for the cost of one year of a bottom-of-the-barrel NFL quarterback, the U.S. could get a lot more students prepared to excel in a second language. Sounds like a bargain.