In most of the world, students start learning English early. In Germany, English class starts in the late elementary years, not as a “special” or an enrichment class once a week, but as a standard part of the curriculum, which means that by the time they graduate high school, their English is quite good, if they’re in the gymnasium, or at least passable, for other levels.
Are Americans deficient because we don’t study a foreign language until high school? (In our school district, the graduation requirement is either two years of a foreign language OR a year of a “vocational” class.)
One could argue that Americans simply don’t need to study a foreign language. After all, the language that students are studying the world over is the lingua franca, the International Language of Business, and American students have the good fortune to have grown up speaking this language from infancy. All other languages are secondary, and there’s no single other obvious language which should have pride of place from an international business perspective. You could make a case for Chinese (though I would expect that the language is so complex that studying it in school wouldn’t really get you far enough to function independently there), or German (not just for its place in the business world but its role in Eastern European business), or French (opening up all of Francophone Africa), as well as Spanish (though its significance in international business is much smaller than its geographic spread, my experience is that our Mexican office has a weaker grasp on English than my other international colleagues). And — let’s face it — most American students will not find themselves, in the future, working at a job which involves international business.
Hence, perhaps American students are better off if that instructional time is used to improve their English composition skills and other core subjects.
But we are headed to a place in which Spanish dominates American foreign language instruction. Statistics published in today’s Tribune indicate that, in Illinois, 83% of AP exams with a 4 or a 5 were Spanish; the next largest number, French, were less than 1/10th as numerous, with Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, and Latin ranking lower.
The context is a feature on a new credential on high school diplomas and transcripts, the State Seal of Biliteracy. And while the article neutrally states that any language is eligible, the gist of the article indicates that what is happening in practice is that Spanish is dominating foreign language instruction, in part because, while high schools have the resources to offer multiple foreign languages (at our school, it’s Spanish, French, Mandarin and — for no reason that I can tell — Italian), schools that start foreign language in elementary school nearly universally choose Spanish, except in the case of special, grant-funded or magnet programs. (A local school has a Japanese-immersion classroom, with half-days in each of English and Japanese, to accommodate and benefit from a large population of Japanese expats; another school offered Mandarin due to a Chinese government grant.)
(Of course, on top of this, I suspect that a significant motivator behind the special “bilingual” recognition is to boost the achievement of Latin American immigrant kids.)
So, on top of my disappointment last year in learning that my son couldn’t take German in high school, it makes me sad that we’re losing diversity in foreign language instruction. And I won’t even start discussing whether the increased emphasis on Americans learning Spanish will be yet another contributor to Spanish-speaking immigrants failing to assimilate and learn English.
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