You have the potential to be the best. You've always been bursting with potential but you finally learned it for yourself in social studies classes in elementary school, when you rose to salute the flag after reading of its heroic inception. You developed a pride that stood behind the legends of America as the land of opportunity and you knew anyone here could make it on their own if they really tried. Some of you have had more potential then others, but either way you would make it.
As you grew up, you probably had no worry in the world about water, food, or clothes and by the time you graduated high school you secretly knew that you could make something of yourself. You were the best. You didn't even have to learn another language since you were privileged enough to know the "lingua franca," the trading language of the world. You came to college nervous, but probably not too concerned about making it and being successful. Your parents or your loans are paying this money for a reason - you were to enjoy college life, you were to compete with other students from other schools who were also the best and you were to beat them because you are better - and you always were.
But what if you don't make it? What if you don't have the tools and fail on a technicality? What if the failing U.S. economy sends everyone in an international frenzy expediting globalization, and makes the German kid that knows English, Spanish, and German more desirable than you? What if that son of the immigrant, whom you had originally complained about ruining your country and culture, captured that job with the department of national security right from underneath your nose because he could speak two languages and you could only speak one?
Then you would have wished you took language classes more seriously or proactively tried to immerse yourself in another culture, to become a more enriched individual with more tools to survive. The issue of whether the core language requirement is too broad is comfortably nestled in between other complaints about classes that just do not seem to contribute any added benefit toward the information that they feel they actually need to know.
These lamentations are direct reflections of the type of young minds the dangerous American machinery is spewing out: a self-centered mindset that has added to the degradation of the notoriety of America in the world. We are fast becoming a people inconsiderate and insensitive to other cultures and the benefits of learning another language all "because everyone else speaks English anyway."
Here we miss the point: "Everyone else" knows English because they bothered to learn it in addition to their original language in order to make them more socially aware or competitive in society. As the world continues to flatten and technology rusts the gates that once stood between us and the rest of the globe, the frail U.S. economy claims it cannot afford to allow immigrants through. In Karnataka, India, for example, children from the age of 5 will begin learning English as a foreign language in its 24,000 state schools. In many European countries, children are encouraged to learn a second language - typically English. The two German girls that I met during my time abroad in Mexico were both multilingual, fluent in Spanish, English, German, and with proficiencies in French. In fact, the United States is quite unusual among the countries of the world in that many of its citizens speak only English and are rarely encouraged to become fluent in any other language. The frail U.S. economy and the lenders of the student loans cannot afford to have its students' dreams shattered on a technicality.
So get out your pens, the first lesson starts here (courtesy of the Center for Applied Linguistics): Languages have been proven to open the door to other cultures and help to understand and appreciate people from other countries, have a positive effect on intellectual growth, increase job opportunities in many careers where knowing another language is a real asset, enriches and enhances mental development, and even protects against mental decline in old age. They leave students with more flexibility in thinking, greater sensitivity to language, and a better ear for listening.
We are supposed to be the best. Now is the time that we start acting like it, and start working on being the most culturally sensitive, linguistically keen generation that ever graced the "melting pot nation."
Nidia Fevry is a
Heights staff columnist. She welcomes comments at fevry@bcheights.com.
