A View from Hawk Hill | To remain world’s top country, learn other languages

While stuck in last weekend’s snowstorm, I flipped through an old copy of People Magazine, saw a picture of German-born Heidi Klum, and had a revelation regarding my academic career.  I wish I had learned to speak another language fluently.

This idea of language had me thinking even more due to another academic revelation I had earlier this week.  A professor told me that English is not the official language of the United States.  In fact, the United States has never even declared an official language.  Am I the only one who did not know this? As a senior political science major, I felt pretty ignorant. 

Despite the efforts of numerous special interest groups and members of Congress, an amendment has yet to pass which declares English as the official language of the U.S.A.  As a nation full of people who initially originated elsewhere, this makes sense.  But the reality of our current language system seems a bit odd.

English may have been the language of some of the first settlers in America, but over time Italian, Irish, German immigrants also brought their languages here.  Who made the decision that we would stick with English? This decision could not have just come to be.  Rather, it was institutionalized by the government. Through the single-language public schools and the prime place of English in the business world, the children of immigrants have found it difficult to preserve their native languages.

So over time, English has been taught to every generation and has become our quasi-official language.  As we rocketed to world dominance, nations began to adopt English as their second official language and started to teach it to their youth in order to compete with us. 

It is remarkable that America’s rise to power has caused many nations to bend over backwards to fulfill our wishes. When traveling to other well-populated areas of the world, we can be comforted by the fact that there will probably be a Starbucks and there will most likely be plenty of people speaking English—both aspects of the American culture.

Our country and the world are quickly changing.  More Spanish-speaking individuals are arriving in America, China is growing, and Germany is the world’s biggest exporter in per capita terms.  It would be advantageous to require all American children to speak one of these additional languages.  Yet opponents claim that acquiring an additional language will take time away from honing English skills in addition to making us appear “un-American.” 

If America is truly one big organic melting pot, who is to say English is the only language we should speak? As our country’s landscape changes, expanding our language education is surely something which should be contemplated. 

The reality of the situation is that our children may not succeed in America, or in the world, without a proper set of language skills.  Mastering reading and writing skills of another language can be more important than achieving success in math and science.  The ability to articulate thoughts in another language can vastly expand opportunities.
By not offering the opportunity to learn other languages to our youngest students, we are  isolating them from an increasingly interconnected world.  Despite America’s powerful status, our ignorance of language could permeate into isolation as children of other nations begin to age into bilingual leaders.

The challenge of “picking” a subsequent language could ultimately open a can of worms.  Learning Spanish would make the most sense given the growing presence of the Hispanic population within America and abroad, but there are so many important languages in this country that emphasizing one over the others will inevitably incur a backlash.

Deciding that we need to emphasize and revamp our English education in addition to adding language instruction is something upon which Americans must agree.  Although English may have eerily evolved as America’s language out of the economic and political  dominance of English-speaking people, we cannot deny its global presence and importance.  But we also cannot continue to ignore the presence of other languages until late in our schooling. 

How do we balance the poor reading scores of America’s children with the cultural suppression of other dialects?  How do we acknowledge our country’s history of homogenization without repeating it?  These are dynamic and perhaps unanswerable questions that we must address.