Foreign Language Education in the United States: The What, the Why, and the How.
By Carmen Gutierrez
Among linguists, there is a common joke that goes something like this:
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who only speaks one language? American.
Though hardly a knee-slapper, the joke makes use of a sentiment that is commonly held by the public, and which reflects a growing trend—America is one of the most linguistically unskilled nations in the developed world. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018, fewer than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language class, and only around 20.7% of all adult Americans can speak a language other than their mother tongue (Devlin). But that’s not to say the few bilingual Americans learned their second language from American schools; in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Less than 1% of American adults are fluent in a language they learned in a U.S. classroom (Friedman).
Not only are there few bilingual Americans and even fewer foreign language learners, those populations are actively on the decline. Across primary, secondary, and tertiary learning institutions, the number of foreign language programs offered has been dropping; between 2013 and 2016, American colleges eliminated 651 such programs (Johnson). These programs were costly to start and often closed due to budgetary restrictions, but as cultural counselor to the French Embassy Bénédicte de Montlaur pointed out, “once these programs close, they are very hard to reopen” (De Montlaur). Decreased funding leads to decreased interest, both of which reduce the number of skilled language instructors—it’s a vicious self-perpetuating cycle.
Meanwhile, in Europe, over 92% of all European students are successfully studying a foreign language, according to Eurostat, the statistical branch of the European Commission (Devlin). On top of that, more than 20 European nations require that every student study at least one year of a second foreign language (Devlin). In China, a similar national policy created in 2003 mandates the beginning of foreign language instruction for all students in the third grade, and that it continue through secondary school (Qi). It has been well documented that multilingualism is beneficial for the cognitive health of individuals as well as the economic prosperity of nations (Stein-Smith), and these countries which promote foreign language programs are reaping the benefits while America falls behind.
Widespread public anxiety about America’s so-called “foreign language deficit” has been growing in recent years, but concern over the state of our foreign language education policy has in fact been plaguing language experts for decades. They have dubbed it a “language paradox”: though American parents and educators unanimously advocate for foreign language education, somehow the United States keeps getting worse and worse. It is clear that America’s fluency in languages “lags behind” that of other developed countries (Devlin), but it is not clear why the foreign language education system has been such a failure, nor is it obvious how to fix the problem. Some scholars say that the failure is due to America’s social and geographic isolation coupled with the fact that English has largely dominated the world as a lingua franca, while others argue that it is rooted in more sinister racist and nationalist tendencies that steer America away from foreign languages. Still others claim it is caused primarily by the lack of a nationally unified curriculum and by unsteady government support between times of war and peace. This paper seeks to explore the scholarly debate over the reasons foreign language education programs in the United States have generally failed, and then compare the proposed solutions to these shortcomings.
Because of these linguistically isolating factors, Americans generally don’t consider foreign language proficiency to be of national importance, she says. As a result, foreign language programs languish as one of the last priorities of high schools and colleges in the United States, and funding is subject to the tides of politics and public opinion at the moment. After the events of September 11, 2001, for example, public anxiety over Americans’ “inability to communicate with the world” spurred universities and Department of Defense programs to sponsor more language programs. Conversely, the recession in 2008 led to the drastic budget cuts that are dismantling language programs today (Met). The government’s unsteady support of foreign language education created ineffective programs, and over time the American populace became disillusioned with foreign language education in general, believing that “learning a foreign language is just too difficult” (Stein-Smith). In sum, Stein-Smith claims that this series of circumstances culminated in distaste for foreign language education and a lack of a unified national program.
In her paper, Brown claims that administrations beginning in 1890 pushed xenophobic attitudes that strangled any attempt at a nationalized American foreign language program in its crib. She cites historical texts from early 19th century America that show a thriving culture of foreign language learning, but points out that the Naturalization Act of 1906 was the beginning of the end of American multilingualism. For the first time, citizenship was denied to non-English speakers, fostering the idea that English is American and ‘foreign’ languages are not. “The price for immigration [between 1890 and 1914] became giving up one’s native language”, Brown writes. She quotes shockingly forward statements made by then-President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech to the American Defense Society asserting that “a hyphenated American is not an American at all” and that “we have room but for one language here, and that is the English language”. This belief continued for decades until World War II, when America suddenly had a need for multilingual Americans in the army. The Army Language Method that was developed during this period later was adapted into the Audio-Lingual Method, which was used widely in elementary school foreign language programs. Its military style, which demands immediate responses from students, “terrified younger students” and led to the demise of elementary language education in America, Brown writes. Since linguists unanimously agree that successful language learning should begin in the elementary years, the lack of elementary education makes language programs beginning in later grades ineffective, creating the unsuccessful system present today.
In the public school system’s infancy, Osborn says, academics strongly advocated for the school to be a “politically neutral” place, not to be contaminated with propaganda from our government or any other. At the same time, the Saper-Whorf theory, which hypothesized that the language one spoke shaped directly how they thought, was becoming widely accepted in academia and was being used to discredit minority groups and foreign cultures. These two philosophies put language learning and public education in direct opposition. Osborn highlights the fate of German language programs after World War II as evidence. When Germany became the enemy, many people, even other language teachers, called for the outright banning of German language education, saying that to teach German was to “inculcate students with the ideas of German culture”. The belief that languages other than English were “foreign” and decidedly un-American thus led to the monolingualization of the United States.
In the concluding pages of Elementary School Foreign Language Programs in the United States, Christine Brown encourages us to consider the following questions when debating the possibility of a national foreign language program: Should all students be required to study a second language? If so, beginning at what age? Should there be national assessments? and What languages should be offered? Kathleen Stein-Smith imagined a system that prioritizes goals of national importance, such as business or national security, promoting languages like Mandarin and French for doing business or Arabic and Korean for national defense. However, a system like this would be susceptible to the fickle tide of public opinion, and no single language would last long enough to generate the foundational fluency America needs. Other academics draw inspiration from the successful national programs of Europe, which use a “mother tongue plus two” rule to teach all students one global language and one locally important language in addition to their mother tongue.
Many methods of implementing a national foreign language program in the United States are worth consideration, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that a desire to learn more about a language’s culture is the most significant predictor of success in foreign language learning (Stein-Smith). Students in Europe are driven to learn many languages because they are in constant contact with friends and family from other countries, and because knowing multiple languages is useful in everyday life. In order to overcome the geographic and political isolation that deprives Americans of such valuable immersion learning, there must be a strong and lasting public desire to understand other cultures and languages. The promotion of second language education would generate greater interest, which would create a larger multilingual community and in turn even more interest in and awareness of other cultures—a self-perpetuating cycle of progress. A multilingual America would then become closer with our allies, more open to foreign traditions and cultures, and more capable of interacting with the diverse world that exists beyond the Unites States.
Works Cited
Brown, Christine L. “Elementary School Foreign Language Programs in the United States.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 532, no. 1, 1994, pp. 164–176., doi:10.1177/0002716294532001012.
Commission on Language Learning. “The State of Languages in the U.S.: A Statistical Portrait : Estimate of Language Skills of U.S. Population Aged Five Years and Older, 2009–2013.” American Academy of Arts and Sciences, www.amacad.org/publication/state-languages-us-statistical-portrait/section/2.
De Montlaur, Bénédicte. “Do You Speak My Language? You Should.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/opinion/learn-foreign-language.html?module=inline.
Devlin, Kat. “Unlike in US, Most European Students Learn a Foreign Language.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 6 Aug. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/06/most-european-students-are-learning-a-foreign-language n-school-while-americans-lag/.
Friedman, Amelia. “America's Lacking Language Skills.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 11 May 2015, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/filling-americas-language-education-potholes/392876/.
Johnson, Steven. “Colleges Lose a ‘Stunning’ 651 Foreign-Language Programs in 3 Years.” Chronicle.com, Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 Jan. 2019.
Met M. (2008) Foreign Language Learning in K‐12 Classrooms in the United States. In: Hornberger N.H. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA
Qi, Grace Yue. “The Importance of English in Primary School Education in China: Perceptions of Students.” Multilingual Education, vol. 6, no. 1, 2016, doi:10.1186/s13616-016-0026-0.
Stein-Smith, Kathleen. The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit, and Our Economic and National Security: A Bibliographic Essay on the U.S. Language Paradox. Edwin Mellen Press, 2013.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who only speaks one language? American.
Though hardly a knee-slapper, the joke makes use of a sentiment that is commonly held by the public, and which reflects a growing trend—America is one of the most linguistically unskilled nations in the developed world. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018, fewer than 20% of American students are enrolled in a foreign language class, and only around 20.7% of all adult Americans can speak a language other than their mother tongue (Devlin). But that’s not to say the few bilingual Americans learned their second language from American schools; in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Less than 1% of American adults are fluent in a language they learned in a U.S. classroom (Friedman).
Not only are there few bilingual Americans and even fewer foreign language learners, those populations are actively on the decline. Across primary, secondary, and tertiary learning institutions, the number of foreign language programs offered has been dropping; between 2013 and 2016, American colleges eliminated 651 such programs (Johnson). These programs were costly to start and often closed due to budgetary restrictions, but as cultural counselor to the French Embassy Bénédicte de Montlaur pointed out, “once these programs close, they are very hard to reopen” (De Montlaur). Decreased funding leads to decreased interest, both of which reduce the number of skilled language instructors—it’s a vicious self-perpetuating cycle.
Meanwhile, in Europe, over 92% of all European students are successfully studying a foreign language, according to Eurostat, the statistical branch of the European Commission (Devlin). On top of that, more than 20 European nations require that every student study at least one year of a second foreign language (Devlin). In China, a similar national policy created in 2003 mandates the beginning of foreign language instruction for all students in the third grade, and that it continue through secondary school (Qi). It has been well documented that multilingualism is beneficial for the cognitive health of individuals as well as the economic prosperity of nations (Stein-Smith), and these countries which promote foreign language programs are reaping the benefits while America falls behind.
Widespread public anxiety about America’s so-called “foreign language deficit” has been growing in recent years, but concern over the state of our foreign language education policy has in fact been plaguing language experts for decades. They have dubbed it a “language paradox”: though American parents and educators unanimously advocate for foreign language education, somehow the United States keeps getting worse and worse. It is clear that America’s fluency in languages “lags behind” that of other developed countries (Devlin), but it is not clear why the foreign language education system has been such a failure, nor is it obvious how to fix the problem. Some scholars say that the failure is due to America’s social and geographic isolation coupled with the fact that English has largely dominated the world as a lingua franca, while others argue that it is rooted in more sinister racist and nationalist tendencies that steer America away from foreign languages. Still others claim it is caused primarily by the lack of a nationally unified curriculum and by unsteady government support between times of war and peace. This paper seeks to explore the scholarly debate over the reasons foreign language education programs in the United States have generally failed, and then compare the proposed solutions to these shortcomings.
- Monolingualism as an unfortunate byproduct
Because of these linguistically isolating factors, Americans generally don’t consider foreign language proficiency to be of national importance, she says. As a result, foreign language programs languish as one of the last priorities of high schools and colleges in the United States, and funding is subject to the tides of politics and public opinion at the moment. After the events of September 11, 2001, for example, public anxiety over Americans’ “inability to communicate with the world” spurred universities and Department of Defense programs to sponsor more language programs. Conversely, the recession in 2008 led to the drastic budget cuts that are dismantling language programs today (Met). The government’s unsteady support of foreign language education created ineffective programs, and over time the American populace became disillusioned with foreign language education in general, believing that “learning a foreign language is just too difficult” (Stein-Smith). In sum, Stein-Smith claims that this series of circumstances culminated in distaste for foreign language education and a lack of a unified national program.
- Monolingualism as a means to national conformity
In her paper, Brown claims that administrations beginning in 1890 pushed xenophobic attitudes that strangled any attempt at a nationalized American foreign language program in its crib. She cites historical texts from early 19th century America that show a thriving culture of foreign language learning, but points out that the Naturalization Act of 1906 was the beginning of the end of American multilingualism. For the first time, citizenship was denied to non-English speakers, fostering the idea that English is American and ‘foreign’ languages are not. “The price for immigration [between 1890 and 1914] became giving up one’s native language”, Brown writes. She quotes shockingly forward statements made by then-President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech to the American Defense Society asserting that “a hyphenated American is not an American at all” and that “we have room but for one language here, and that is the English language”. This belief continued for decades until World War II, when America suddenly had a need for multilingual Americans in the army. The Army Language Method that was developed during this period later was adapted into the Audio-Lingual Method, which was used widely in elementary school foreign language programs. Its military style, which demands immediate responses from students, “terrified younger students” and led to the demise of elementary language education in America, Brown writes. Since linguists unanimously agree that successful language learning should begin in the elementary years, the lack of elementary education makes language programs beginning in later grades ineffective, creating the unsuccessful system present today.
- Monolingualism as the result of white bias
In the public school system’s infancy, Osborn says, academics strongly advocated for the school to be a “politically neutral” place, not to be contaminated with propaganda from our government or any other. At the same time, the Saper-Whorf theory, which hypothesized that the language one spoke shaped directly how they thought, was becoming widely accepted in academia and was being used to discredit minority groups and foreign cultures. These two philosophies put language learning and public education in direct opposition. Osborn highlights the fate of German language programs after World War II as evidence. When Germany became the enemy, many people, even other language teachers, called for the outright banning of German language education, saying that to teach German was to “inculcate students with the ideas of German culture”. The belief that languages other than English were “foreign” and decidedly un-American thus led to the monolingualization of the United States.
- Conclusions
In the concluding pages of Elementary School Foreign Language Programs in the United States, Christine Brown encourages us to consider the following questions when debating the possibility of a national foreign language program: Should all students be required to study a second language? If so, beginning at what age? Should there be national assessments? and What languages should be offered? Kathleen Stein-Smith imagined a system that prioritizes goals of national importance, such as business or national security, promoting languages like Mandarin and French for doing business or Arabic and Korean for national defense. However, a system like this would be susceptible to the fickle tide of public opinion, and no single language would last long enough to generate the foundational fluency America needs. Other academics draw inspiration from the successful national programs of Europe, which use a “mother tongue plus two” rule to teach all students one global language and one locally important language in addition to their mother tongue.
Many methods of implementing a national foreign language program in the United States are worth consideration, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that a desire to learn more about a language’s culture is the most significant predictor of success in foreign language learning (Stein-Smith). Students in Europe are driven to learn many languages because they are in constant contact with friends and family from other countries, and because knowing multiple languages is useful in everyday life. In order to overcome the geographic and political isolation that deprives Americans of such valuable immersion learning, there must be a strong and lasting public desire to understand other cultures and languages. The promotion of second language education would generate greater interest, which would create a larger multilingual community and in turn even more interest in and awareness of other cultures—a self-perpetuating cycle of progress. A multilingual America would then become closer with our allies, more open to foreign traditions and cultures, and more capable of interacting with the diverse world that exists beyond the Unites States.
Works Cited
Brown, Christine L. “Elementary School Foreign Language Programs in the United States.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 532, no. 1, 1994, pp. 164–176., doi:10.1177/0002716294532001012.
Commission on Language Learning. “The State of Languages in the U.S.: A Statistical Portrait : Estimate of Language Skills of U.S. Population Aged Five Years and Older, 2009–2013.” American Academy of Arts and Sciences, www.amacad.org/publication/state-languages-us-statistical-portrait/section/2.
De Montlaur, Bénédicte. “Do You Speak My Language? You Should.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/opinion/learn-foreign-language.html?module=inline.
Devlin, Kat. “Unlike in US, Most European Students Learn a Foreign Language.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 6 Aug. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/06/most-european-students-are-learning-a-foreign-language n-school-while-americans-lag/.
Friedman, Amelia. “America's Lacking Language Skills.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 11 May 2015, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/filling-americas-language-education-potholes/392876/.
Johnson, Steven. “Colleges Lose a ‘Stunning’ 651 Foreign-Language Programs in 3 Years.” Chronicle.com, Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 Jan. 2019.
Met M. (2008) Foreign Language Learning in K‐12 Classrooms in the United States. In: Hornberger N.H. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA
Qi, Grace Yue. “The Importance of English in Primary School Education in China: Perceptions of Students.” Multilingual Education, vol. 6, no. 1, 2016, doi:10.1186/s13616-016-0026-0.
Stein-Smith, Kathleen. The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit, and Our Economic and National Security: A Bibliographic Essay on the U.S. Language Paradox. Edwin Mellen Press, 2013.