Foreign Language Study and Immigration

Christian Science Monitor reports on the possible elimination of Georgia public high schools' foreign-language requirement by the Board of Education.

Under pressure to eliminate a dual-track diploma system, the Georgia Board of Education is considering dropping its merit track language requirement and adding a math requirement for vocational students. As testing increases in core academic subjects, languages are an issue on a number of states' agendas. A few months ago, the New Jersey legislature made it easier for high-schoolers to have their foreign-language requirements waived.

Many pundits decry the lack of American interest in studying foreign languages at a time of expanding globalization. I'd like to second their assertion that the study of a foreign language can be a very valuable component of one's personal development, and can form the basis for grassroots cultural exchanges between America and the rest of the world at a time when our country is so greatly misunderstood. However, these same pundits never seem to consider that the very fact of our openness to the world, manifested in mass immigration, far from providing an incentive to study foreign languages to communicate with all our new neighbors, who learn English anyway, instead results in the rational decision by millions of American students to de-emphasize their foreign language studies in favor of areas with a higher return to their time and efforts:

[E]ven devotees like UGA linguist Joe McFall admit it's always been hard for Americans to muster up enthusiasm for the languages of foreign shores. Not only does the whole world seem to speak English, but many consider it part of the American immigrant spirit to want to assimilate into society by suppressing the mother tongue, which is why many second-generation immigrants speak only English.

Sure, blame that "American mainstream" for forcing the children of immigrants to forget their ancestral languages, rather than considering that the lazy children might have chosen the path of forgetfulness themselves. What 2nd-generation American would consider studying his ancestral language a rational economic decision when it would take him years of effort to obtain the same command as an H1B visa holder from his ancestral country, and when he could be using those same years to study accounting, computer programming, or some other skill providing him with a guaranteed future? [1]

In the present environment, there's hardly any advantage to being a multilingual database engineer or sales director from the US when Chinese-speaking database engineers from China and Russian-speaking sales directors from Russia are cheaper and far more plentiful. Whatever costs might be incurred by the fact that such foreign workers are likely to speak less-than-fluent English are more than made up for by the lower paycheck they demand.

As a result, the only decently fluent foreign language speakers America consistently produces, or needs to produce, are European literature majors from universities. Others can be imported, and, local high school principals, knowing it's impossible to cram much language into kids' heads in 4 years of post-puberty education, give up on the idea, while local middle school principals doubt that teaching their students a foreign language would be worth the money. And everyone else is content to muddle by with the amount of Spanglish they need for addressing the clerks at their local grocery store.

[1] Not that I'd consider that any excuse for the pathetically low command of ancestral languages among American-born Asian, especially given the amount of ranting about "Asian pride" and the level of complaints about the racism of mainstream society, but I'll try to stay on topic, seeing as I've written about this extensively in the past.