Why We Need Education Reform Towards Foreign Language in America
Hello everyone!
One of the initiatives we’re working on at M&P Inc. is reforming the education system to shift its focus more so on foreign language and culture education. The thing about foreign language education is, unlike other school subjects where you focus on one particular area of study, you can learn literally ANYTHING. I believe bilingual education is the future; imagine being able to talk about history, science, or do math in 2 language! Based on the research I’ve been collecting for our official proposition, here are the primary reasons why education reform is absolutely essential for our country.
More Job Opportunties
For those of you who speak only English or thought about learning a new language but never started, you’re missing out on so many opportunties! With me being multilingual, it feels so good when I apply for jobs. At one point after college, my recruiter told me “I’ll send over your resume, but this client insisted they need someone who speaks Spanish” and my response was “oh yeah that fine” instead of a “oh nevermind”. You’re even missing out on money that could be added to your salary by about 10-15% without having to do too much extra labor except communicating in 2 languages! In 2017, a report from the New American Economy said between 2010 and 2015 the number of job listings for bilingual workers nearly tripled from around 200,000 to over 600,000! I can only imagine how much those numbers have possibly grown today. The demand is getting higher and we’re living in a globalized world with constant daily international communication. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of translation and interpretation workers, sometimes I think we take for granted how much our world is accessible to us because of the people who work in this field.
Existing Immigration and Multilingualism
I think it’s so ignorant for people to say “this is America, we speak English” because this is becoming less true since we have a large population of immigrants; many of which might have descendants that are American citizens who want to keep their languages in their families. Over centuries of the United States being in existence, people have come from all over and they’ve settle in certain areas. From living in Los Angeles and having been to New York City, there are areas like Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, or Little Ethiopia where certain groups of people flock to. In Los Angeles, a large part of the population speaks Spanish and they do so unapologetically since California and many other states in the sun belt region were Spanish or Mexican territories at some point in history. Even though the United States now own these territories, that doesn’t mean the languages just go away. I’ve also witnessed, people coming from everywhere to study abroad or do business so it’s normal to see people speaking one language to their Starbucks barrista and then speaking another on the phone to their collegues somewhere else. So it’s unrealistic to have a “we speak English” mentality and I generally think it’s rude to ask someone (who’s not talking to you) to speak English based on the arguments I just made.
International Business
Did you know that America actually LOSES money because of language barriers and cultural misunderstandings? Yes! Nearly $2 billion every year! The U.S. Department of Education stated that 1 in 5 American jobs are linked to international trade. As an example, my favorite airline is Delta Airlines. Minus the pandemic, international travel is a big part of their services and they’ve hired thousands of LOD (Language of Destination) flight attendants because they cater to international clientele. After college, I was a Lyft driver for a few months and with Lyft being a partner of Delta, I managed to pick up several flight attendants and pilots in which one of them told me Delta was planning on hiring roughly 3,000 attendants for French LOD! At the time, they were looking for 3,000 people with French proficiency and LOD attendants are paid higher hourly wages, they can more hours (depending on the distance) than those working domestic flights. Could you imagine desperately needing bilingual/multilingual when you work with so many airports, airlines, hotels, and other hospitality businesses around the globe? There are companies willing to pay top dollar for high demand workers. Not to mention, they also have international contracts in which they need to understand, not only the language, but the culture as well as international laws and policies to do anything which is another layer of jobs.
On a more day-to-day perspective, if you enjoy going to Trader Joe’s, you might notice part of their wine selection is imported from other countries. It’s the same thing if you love their pizza! When you flip the box over you’ll see that (by law) they include the country it came from, like “made in Italy”, there’s one brand that was made in a French region close to Germany I believe. Trader Joe’s probably has contracts with international suppliers since they are both the distributor and the retailer. Don’t be too far removed from where your food and beverages come from. You might be surprised a language and culture barrier was crossed for it to end up on your local grocery shelves.
Diplomacy and International Humanitarianism
Looking at foreign diplomacy within the federal goverment, what is the President of the United States supposed to do when he need to communicate with our allies in non-English speaking countries? What about with adversaries to avoid major conflicts? Who’s going to inform the president about cultural protocols when visiting another world leader to avoid moments where Trump walked in front of the Queen of England and angered the entire country? What about when we’re in a global health crisis and we, along with our allies, are working collaboratively on vaccines? What about if a natural disaster occurs in another country and we need to provide aid but the doctors can’t understand what their patients need? If you’re a missionary, how can you expect someone in a foreign country to under Jesus when they can’t understand a word you’re saying? In many of these scenarios, these could be life or death situations where being multilingualism is crucial.
Travel Experiences
I feel like this is an obvious one. Foreign language education can grant students opportunities to study or work abroad after college. When you travel to countries where English isn’t an official language, it makes a world of different to be able to read, not play charades when you want to find information from locals, make friends, or even be able to travel outside of tourist areas where English will not help you at all. Since culture is just as important as language, you can avoid situations where you can be perceived as rude or as a “dumb American”. Over the years of mastering French, I found out that French people don’t talk to strangers on the metro and remain pretty quiet. Being loud and abnoxious can make you a target for pickpockets by not acknowledging the status quo. As another example, Germans are very punctual so be on time, if not early, especially in professonal settings. From my own personal experience, regardless of why you’re there, knowing the target language and culture will ensure you have the best experiences possible for locals to treat you well.
Better learners
Research is showing how knowledge of 2 or more languages can increase the brain’s ability to process information. That’s practically what we do in school all day; our brains are processing and trying to understand the information it’s received. You’re likely to see higher levels of concentration, higher retention of information, and the ability to concentration and filter out useless information. I was taking an online course from the University of Gronigen (located in the Netherlands) for Multilingual Practices on the Future Learn platform, and they mentioned how bilinguals and multilinguals are more likely to successfully pass The Stroop Test than monolinguals.
Higher levels of empathy and social tolerance
I saved this for last as from personal experience this is one of the most important. When you have the knowledge to step outside your own language and culture, it changes your perspective on how you perceive others different from you. After having learned 8 languages up to this point, I realized that we’re all saying the same thing but sounds different. When you’re learning a new language, it teaches you to listen before you speak and read before you write. It also puts you in the shoes of what a non-English speaking immigrant goes through every day as they’re grasping this new language and I think studying abroad gives you the same point of view. I know that racism and immigration are such hot topics in this country, but learning a new language (along with the culture) you start to understand people better. You might think someone is shy or standoffish, but then you find out they aren’t 100% comfortable speaking English and you just so happen to be learning their native language. In making an effort to communicate with this person, you might find out they’re much cooler than you thought they were and develop a connection you wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise.