American Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAmerican Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesSo a few days ago, in his answer to a question about bilingual education, Obama said that American children need to learn a foreign language--that in the rapidly globalizing world we inhabit, language skills are increasingly important. As a post on DailyKos notes,
"It's obvious too that learning a foreign language helps you to understand your own language better. It also brings perspective on how to think, speak, and write. While thinking critically about ideas you learn to communicate them more precisely.
Predictably, right-wingers flew into a rage at Obama's un-American call for better language skills. For example, John McCormack at the Weakly Standard labeled language education as snobbery and elitism. John Derbyshire called Obama's suggestion "idiotic" because "not many human beings can learn another language", as his own failures prove. He combines that with characteristic condescension:
'In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time.' "
Historians have often referred to America's anti-intellectual streak, but this comment goes beyond mere anti-intellectualism. It embraces intellectual suicide. And THIS is the mind-set that has been running our country for the past seven-plus years. We don't need no stinkin' science or furrin-language, and don't try to cow us with your fancy-schmancy "rule of law." Pathetic.
Sheila Suess Kennedy's blog | login or register to post comments
The brain is known for its neuroplasticity. The language centers of the brain are "plastic" with respect to new language pattern acquisition before age 7. Which is why I find it beyond ludicrious that we don't even introduce foreign language studies until high school.
Tres stupide!
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Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com
It's my experience that DailyKos is right on here. I learned more about English while learning Latin than I ever did in "English" classes. On top of that, learning another language can give one insights into another culture that might be obscured otherwise.
I have to strenuously disagree with Mr. Derbyshire's conclusion. While it may be true that certain subjects either might not hold the interest of, or actually be beyond the comprehension of a certain segment of the population, there would be little correlation to the equivalency in language skills. The same population who might not care for trigonometry or philosophy, do seem to be able to acquire at least passable skills in language. If a student is exposed to multiple languages early enough, conversational fluency can certainly be achieved for multiple languages, in my opinion. Unfortunately, too many American students aren't exposed to another language early enough while their cognitive processes are still heavily invested in language acquisition.
As part of a hobby of mine, I deal a lot with Europeans who are quite fluent in English as a second, third or even a fourth language. The idea that people cannot learn multiple languages would seem ludicrous in this light.
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