Foreign language education in the U.S.: a neglected cure for xenophobia

Xenophobia has deep roots in the U.S. For all of its “global melting pot” rhetoric, the reality has been much more complex. It begins with the maltreatment of the native peoples of America with its attendant extinction of their language and culture. But even as recently as 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons from India were not eligible for U.S. citizenship because only “free white persons” were permitted. This case was one of the most egregious in the history of the United States and is a poignant example of how the Supreme Court reflects, rather than transcends, prevailing cultural values. In the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that an Indian Sikh man could not be granted citizenship because he was not white. Even today, the suspicion with which many English-speaking Americans view Spanish speakers undoubtedly contributes to their xenophobic calls to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

Language and culture are inextricably linked. We use spoken and written language to pass cultural values among one another and from one generation to another. Small wonder that imperialists throughout time have first sought to rid colonies of their native language. But perhaps it’s also true that by purposefully teaching languages, the U.S. will begin to see itself as a global participant rather than a global boss. The Latin origins of the word “educate” imply a process of leading out, drawing out, or leading away. Seen in this way, education isn’t a preparation solely to become part of an economic engine. It is to lead away from entrenched provincial ideas to a broader world view. Language education is a key component of this process.

Language education in the U.S.

Foreign language education in the U.S. is, to be blunt, deplorable. Owing to its fragmentary leadership structure, there are no national standards for education in the U.S. Local school districts, large and small are left to their own devices in writing curriculum standards. In many cases, individual states have specific standards to which local districts must adhere. But even those standards often derided by local politicians.

The effectiveness of a process can be judged by its outcomes. The desired outcome of foreign language education is fluency in the target language. In the U.S., less than 1% of Americans are fluent in a language that they studied in school.^[America’s Lacking Language Skills, The Atlantic, May 10, 2015. Friedman, A. Link] According to Stephen Dubner of “Freakonomics” fame, the average U.S. student studies a foreign language for 2-3 years.^[Is Learning a Foreign Language Really Worth It?, Freakonomics blog, March 5, 2014. Link] It’s hard to imagine anything more wasteful for children’s developing brains to spend hundreds of hours studying something they will never actually be able to apply in a meaningful way. Education budget cuts, lack of qualified teachers, and disjointed policy all contribute to poor foreign language acquisition by U.S. students. And that, in turn, heightens the perception that knowing English is sufficient to participate in the affairs of the world.

Language education worldwide

In contrast to the U.S. public education, the competent acquisition of a foreign language is required. Most European countries require the study of two foreign languages from an early age.^[Learning a foreign language a ‘must’ in Europe, not so in America, Devlin, K.,Pew Research Center, July 13, 2015, Link]

In this study from the Pew Research Center, nearly three-quarters of European countries require the study of not just one foreign language, but two languages. Instead, the U.S. is a crazy-quilt of state and local foreign language requirements. Some states are even allowing students to substitute computer languages for foreign languages to meet this requirement. I’m sure this will help them enormously during their vacations in Computerland!

Another striking observation about language education in Europe is that it begins early, far earlier than the U.S. where most foreign language education takes place in high school. The delayed exposure to foreign languages for most U.S. students has two devastating effects. Drawing on what is known about the acquisition of musical ability, another aural skill, students who first encounter a foreign language late in their education are less likely to become fluent because certain features of brain plasticity decline. A more insidious effect of delayed foreign language study is that students become more and more rooted in their own cultures. Their world view becomes more and more fossilized. This, of course, is the start of a vicious cycle. Their poor foreign language experience means that they won’t support improvements for the next generation.

Solutions

Foreign language acquisition is a must. Political rallies, calls to Make America Great Again™, walls, immigration bans and disparaging foreign nations won’t solve looming worldwide crises like climate change. But being able to understand and communicate with one another might.

  1. First, the U.S. needs to “prime the pump” by recruiting and developing qualified teachers who speak foreign languages competently. The U.S. already has an agency, the National Security Education Program (NSEP) a Federal initiative whose aim is to build the pool of U.S. citizens who fluently speak languages that are vital to its security interests.
  2. The U.S. Federal government should develop and promote a plan for compulsory foreign language education beginning in the early elementary years.
  3. The U.S. foreign language educational plan should develop a language prioritization based on the languages spoken by its own citizens and residents and on the languages spoken by both its adversaries and allies. The NSEP has developed just such a list of languages of strategic security importance.
  4. The U.S. should develop a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of foreign language education, holding school systems accountable for ensuring that each student is developing language fluency.

On a personal note, I was educated in the U.S. My first exposure to a language other than English was Latin which I studied for two years beginning in Grade 9. I went on to study French and Russian in high school with an amazing teacher Mme Collette Males to whom I’ve indescribably indebted. Had I not had this experience, I’m not quite sure where I would be.

Trump and the arts

I’ve long suspected that Trump regards the arts as an unnecessary nuisance for losers and suckers. High art for this hollow man is the vacuous reality television that made him famous. Now in his Federal budget, Trump offers proof. He proposes the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This is a man with no soul.

But in the closing lines of her lyric poem “Renascence”, Edna St. Vincent Millay has a warning:

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay Renascence

If it’s not garish, gold, or glittering, it’s not worth our investment. Time for an artist’s march.

Using macOS NSSpeechSynthesizer to generate audio content for Anki cards

As I’ve written before, I use Anki for Russian language learning. One of the skills to master in learning a foreign language is to quickly speak and recognize numbers. With a little help from macOS, I’ve developed a way of rapidly creating audible content of spoken numbers for my Anki cards. That’s the good news. The bad news is that as of right now, you’ll have to have Xcode and build the app yourself.

My month without news

“The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates This year I decided to take a different approach to making New Year’s resolutions. Although many people make resolutions, less than 10% regard themselves as successful at achieving them. I decided to overhaul the idea of New Year’s resolutions. Rather than committing to an entire year of change, I set up a schedule of 12 mini-resolutions in the form of experiments.

Using rrdtool to chart Indigo data

Indigo currently shipping version 7 is a leading Mac home automation software package. One of it’s mostly widely-used features is its ability to execute user-provided Python scripts of AppleScripts. In my previous introduction to scripting Indigo with Python I showed how to use the Indigo plugin host to execute Python scripts. In this post, I’ll describe how I use a third-party charting package rrdtool to graph data from Indigo by taking advantage of Indigo’s ability to execute arbitrary Python scripts.

The right way to resist Trump

An interesting perspective on resisting Trump by focusing on policy and not personality: “The Italian experience provides a blueprint for how to defeat Mr. Trump. Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr. Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi (albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character.

Helping the helpers

Since the election in the U.S., my wife and I have supported the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. So should you.

Don't feed the troll

In internet speak, “to feed the troll” means to try to engage people online who are just trying to stir up discord for no other reason than to provoke people. Trolls are almost always insecure, psychologically-damaged people, if not full-blown psychopaths who lack the usual social barriers that most of us possess. Thus, a common piece of advice tossed about on the Internet is: “don’t feed the troll.” This is sound advice.

AppleScript and iTerm2

Among the many reasons I use iTerm2 in lieu of the macOS Terminal is its AppleScript support. I recently had the need to automate some tasks on my Amazon Web Services EC2 server in a way that takes advantage of iTerm2 AppleScript functionality. Use case I’ve found recently, that my screen sessions were disappearing. Although I haven’t completely excluded other causes, some have suggested that infrequently-reconnected sessions can be cleaned up.

Law and order

  “The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration.” - whitehouse.gov January 25, 2017