According to Barack Obama, yes….

“We as a society do a really bad job of teaching foreign language and it’s costing us in the global marketplace,” he said.

“When it comes to second-language learners, the most important thing is not to get bogged down in ideology, but figure out what works,” he said “Everybody should be bilingual, or everybody should be trilingual.”

Many foreign countries start teaching kids as young as eight another language. In the U.S., many students do not start taking another language until they are 14, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C.

Ahem…  try age 5…

While I am not one to defend US educational policy, particularly as deals with foreign language learning.  Given my profession, one would accurately guess that I’m a huge advocate for more emphasis being placed on FL-learning in US schools.  I do, however, want to split hairs with his (grossly simplified) analysis…  Actually, in terms of teaching effectiveness, meaning methodology and resources, I think FL teachers in the US do an incredible job.  Why then, do we have so very few kids with more than rudimentary FL skills?  Simple, really — we don’t demand such from them.  As a nation, we have yet to really demand more from the public education sector than the most basic of FL skills.  Most school systems don’t demand any FL classes to graduate, and those that do (or colleges that require it for entrance) typically require 2 years of HS classes.  Such is not going to make for a bilingual society…

The “problem” (so to speak) is simple economics.  Schools typically reflect the demands of the workplace (although, to be fair, they often have a 20-30 year lag), and there has been little demand for foreign language skills in the US workplace.  Politicians often talk about educational policy in terms of infinite possibility.  They want the schools to handle everything — they want children to achieve the entirety of human potential between kindergarten and 12th grade, however, the truth is, schools are limited…  The greatest limitation in education is not, as one always seems to hear from media, school councils, etc. financial ones.  Instead, the limitation on learning that is most profound is time.  Schools are given a limited amount of hours each day, a set number of days each year, and 12 total years into which to pack a heck of a lot of learning.  While everyone would love it if schools could pack the entirety of the human experience into each child, tie it off with a bow, and send them packing to college, in the real world, what that time limitation means is prioritizing what you most want children to learn.  Different societies value different skills and knowledges (to a point), and their educational systems reflect this.  The US educational system, long ago, made a conscious decision to embrace the sciences, and especially computing technologies, at the expense of language education (mind you, some schools still suck at teaching science — I’m not denying that some schools are simply in trouble).  This was a response to market forces that said that it was ultimately more important that adults know how to type, for instance, than to speak French.  Contrast this with Europeans, with whom the American education system is often negatively compared — especially in the realm of FL learning.  Dutch high school grads usually have to attain at least basic proficiency in at least 2 languages other than Dutch (one is usually English) — and most will usually have mastered at least one of the two.  Most Dutch children start foreign language lessons at the very beginning of elementary school.  Many hours of instruction and practice transpire over the course of primary and secondary schooling.  This is an economic necessity for the Netherlands, however.  Their commitment to speaking the languages of their neighbors (and the world, in general) keeps them economically relevant in the world, as not many people are clamoring to learn Dutch (a lovely language, btw — I speak a bit and I highly recommend it!).  However, these hours come at a cost.  Across Europe, adults crowd into night schools to get computer instruction that most Americans would find incredibly remedial.  I was absolutely shocked at the content of what my corporate students in Spain were learning in night classes.  It was literally stuff that I had learned in high school (although updated as it was roughly 10 years later) — MS Word applications, spreadsheets, and the like…

The rules of the game seem to be changing, however, and as FL proficiency becomes more and more prized over a variety of professions, US schools will find themselves under increased pressure from business and local communities to devote more and more time and resources to FL learning.  As much as people in my profession would like to wave a magic wand and make that happen overnight, only market forces can truly cause a national shift towards an embrace of foreign language learning.  I think we are on the way…  Childhood FL programs, immersion schools, and the like are certainly on the rise across the US.  Languages like Chinese and Arabic — which previously were barely taught at all before the university level — have been popping up in school systems across the US.

My dream: What I would truly like to hear from politicians is not another “we should add such-and-such to the curriculum” speech…  Instead, I’d be truly impressed to hear a politician suggest what should be dropped from the curriculum in order to make room for the teaching/learning of more relevant skills for tomorrow’s marketplace.

A great article from a Filipina resident in Europe in Saturday’s American Chronicle…

While, by and large, you don’t see as many Americans “jumping ship” and leaping into lives in foreign countries on whims as much as you see it from certain other nationalities (it really is a phenomenon to behold in the article-writer’s native Philippines), still, every once in a while, I hear people coming back from a 1-2 week vacation, simply glowing about a certain destination, and actively pondering leaving it all behind to go and set up shop there.  Always reminds me of this, to be frank…

The truth is, immigration is a difficult road, and it’s certainly not for everyone.  To be honest, I’ve always suspected that it’s a small minority of people on the planet who can successfully choose to leave behind the home, people, and language that they know, and strike out for a mysterious land in the hopes of better fortune.  Mind you, many immigrants are forced into that position by war, political upheaval, etc., and my hat is off to them for making the best of the poor hand that they’ve been dealt, but most will admit in all honesty, that is they had their preference, they would have preferred to stay home (assuming peaceful conditions had allowed such).

The key to successful immigration is information.  One, first, has to realize that there is a profound difference between visiting and living in a locale.  On tour, everything is roses…  Tours are set up to maximize the good parts of any given place.  You’re typically not there long enough to encounter culture shock, and often, given favorable exchange rates, you’re living a lifestyle which greatly exceeds that of residents.  Moving there, however, is a completely different ballgame…  No matter where you go, culture shock is inevitable.  News flash: different places are… well… different…  and the difference will slowly but surely grind at our nerves.  I’ve loved the various places where I’ve lived, but there wasn’t a single one where life was foot-loose and fancy-free.  For instance, as much as I loved (and continue to love) Taiwan, I doubt if I will ever move beyond a sullen toleration for the chaotic, mass pandemonium that is Taiwanese traffic.  Also, once you’re on a local salary (although, mind you, if you’re on an ex-pat salary and perk package, you can probably skip this part), the high life dissipates.  The realities of local living conditions start to seep in.  You’ll probably be living quite well by local standards (otherwise, very few of us would ever consider it), but there are always inevitably compromises of comfort to be made.  For instance, in Japan — as first class a country as currently exists, for sure — cold, snowy winters + lack of insulation in most homes + primary heating devices being kerosene stoves in most homes = cold misery throughout much of the winter, frozen toilet bowls from time to time, poor circulation in the lower extremities, etc…. — all conditions that most westerners found quite difficult to put up with…

As I’ve mentioned before, I highly encourage people to do their homework and really put some work into researching the conditions and realities of a place before going — particularly if you’re considering moving your family.  Immigration can be much harder on children, and the conditions of local schools can be positively frightening  (as is the tuition bill for most international schools).  Evaluate the decision carefully — you’ll be glad you did…  It’ll help you to avoid terrible mistakes, and if you still go, the preparation in advance will smooth your transition and heighten your enjoyment of your new surroundings.

Just a reminder for those who only study Western European languages… There’s a lot more out there…

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On Wednesday 25 June over 200 pupils from schools in the Exeter, Newton Abbot, Torbay and Totnes areas will be involved in activities that focus on occupations that use languages on a daily basis.

PEC Inc., a Syracuse-based language instruction company that has for years been a primary provider for language instruction to military personnel is offering world language courses for high school students this summer….

If you’re in the area, and you have a properly-aged youngster, check ‘em out…

LeTutor lists a great incentive to learn Spanish…  Sad to say that this pic is from my own digs, so to speak… Good ol’ Arizona…

Maybe…

We’ve all heard variations of the complaint: “I couldn’t understand a thing that teacher said!  It’s sooo unfair to test me on content when I can’t understand the teacher….”  I’ve heard this from students, and while I sympathize to some extent, I usually take it with a grain of salt (the size of Mt. Everest), as students are perennial whiners, and nothing is ever the student’s own fault.  Now there’s some empirical evidence which suggests that there actually is an effect.  Foreign-born TAs actually do statistically hurt American students’ final grade performance, but strangely, not other international students’.  There is some intuitive sense to this, based on two different factors.  First, the language factor: foreign accents are, in effect, degraded speech, and a little degradation disrupts a lot of comprehension when talking about unfamiliar subject matter.  Different universities and departments have varying standards for TA English proficiency, and I have certainly come across some TAs who were quasi-incomprehensible.  Still, I doubt that this is the main problem, as if so, there would be more of a corresponding effect on international students’ grades.  All the students are not going to be the same nationality as the TA (my Chinese friends complain just as bitterly about Indian TAs as Americans do), and even if they are from the same language background, that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to understand each other.  Badly accented language is simply difficult for everyone to understand.  I think the stronger option effecting performance is presentational style.  American education is actually pretty strange by world standards.  Most of the world has the “sit-down-shut-up” lecture style of education, whereas most American undergrads have just graduated from a high school where they were primarily taught via interactive methods wherein open discussion was encouraged.  Even with an American prof, most students hate those huge amphitheater freshman core classes.  If this were the main effect, this could help to explain why international students, who are completely used to this — having received the entirety of their K-12 education in this format — are not hurt grade-wise by foreign-born TAs.  The combination of degraded speech with an unfamiliar presentational format prevents students from being able to bootstrap and use other cues to compensate for the speech they can’t understand.  Just a thought, anyway….

As I’ve reported here before, China is gearing up for its turn on the world stage this August, and trying to put its best foot forward.  Part of the effort has entailed encouraging restaurants to stop literal translations of menu items like “the farmer is small to fry king” and misspellings, like my perennial favorite, “crap fried rice.”  Money Morning, today, makes the interesting argument that these types of linguistic shifts reflect a profound economic and cultural shift, like unto the language mixing effects we see when words and concepts like “golf” entered into the vocabulary earlier this century.  No word on what this will do for the emergence of a freely elected civil government, but one can always keep their fingers crossed….

No Child Left Behind seems to be one of the cruelest titled federal programs ever begat…

“Many, many schools are saying because of NCLB they’ve either had to cut back the number of hours they’ve offered to spend more time on math and literacy reading skills or they’ve had to cut back on the number of students taking foreign languages because they weren’t making enough progress in these other areas….So schools that used to offer two or three languages now are only offering one.”

Sounds fair…  You’d get similar, if not better, language instruction as you would in public schools.  Plus, many kids (note: not all) would have some significantly increased motivation for studying something that relates specifically to them and their own background.  Also, the State Dept., Defense Dept., etc., who are literally begging people to learn non-traditionally-taught languages, will be veeeeeeeeeeery happy…