Foreign language education in the U.S. is severely insufficient.
In some systems, children are taught the same material year after year until they get to high school and have the opportunity to take advanced classes. Some curriculums require a certain language in elementary to middle school; others have multiple language options; immersion schools teach foreign language before they teach English. There is no uniformity.
Sometimes there seems to be a lack of effort. The inadequacy of foreign language education in the U.S. is not only a waste of students’ time, but it also restricts American globalization and societal acceptance of diversity.
This past summer, I worked as a Starbucks barista in the kiosk of a Hen House Market. The Starbucks kiosk directly faces the produce section. I quickly noticed that nearly all of the produce department employees are Latino and most of them consistently ordered a beverage before or after their shift.
Many of them do not speak English or have difficulty speaking English, so they would have another employee translate their order. They do this because none of the Starbucks employees, including myself, spoke Spanish. I never considered my foreign language education — or lack thereof — as something to be valued until then.
My required Spanish classes started in kindergarten and ended after two years of required foreign language in high school. After all those years, I do not speak fluent Spanish. In fact, I do not speak Spanish at all.
Most of my friends are in the same situation. We all went to the same schools and received the same education. It is reasonable to expect us to be bilingual by now, but we are not.
Despite taking about 11 years of Spanish, my brother actually became fluent in Spanish while working at a fast food restaurant. The only people I knew in school to be multilingual either went to a foreign charter school or were children of immigrants.
According to 2007 Census data, about 20 percent of the American population is bilingual. Approximately half of the European population was multilingual in 2005. Around 43 percent of the world’s population is bilingual. For a nation that prides itself on its economic, militaristic and political power, our cultural globalism is significantly hindered.
Despite our constant influx of immigrants, native-born Americans are sadly unaware of their neighbors’ culture and language. This breeds societal isolation due to an inability to communicate and understand each other. If the American foreign language educational system would rise to the level of its international associates, there would be less cultural isolation within American borders and between countries. It’s time for the U.S. to play catch-up.
¡Vámonos!