Today’s Outrage of the Day on the right side of the blogosphere regards this latest bit from Barack Obama, regarding the need for our educational system to get better at teaching other languages.
Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.
You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?
You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.
This, to me, seems pretty uncontroversial. I personally consider it a woeful deficiency in my education that I speak only the barest smattering of French and Spanish–certainly not enough to carry on a conversation–and am completely ignorant of any Chinese or Japanese. Indeed, I recall a time not too long ago when conversatives lamented the fact that multilinguism, once a foundation of what was considered a well-rounded education, had fallen to the wayside. Not anymore, apparently, as here’s a quick roundup from around the right side of the blogosphere:
- Glenn Reynolds: “Barack Obama: Europeans are cooler than Americans.”
- Tom Maguire: “Whoa. Reporting live from the United Kingdom, I have been assured that the typical Brit does not speak many (i.e., any) languages other than English and a smattering of American. Apparently Obama is aware that culturally, Britain is not part of Europe, and he assumes we know it as well.”
- Gateway Pundit: “Obama is quite embarrassed that Americans are so boorish and refuse to speak French while traveling abroad. It’s so uncouth.”
My OTB Colleague Dave Schuler has some more sensible comments on this at his own blog:
I’m a language junkie. I’m fluent in several and conversant in a number of others. But for Americans that’s a hobby and an eccentricity not a necessity. Many Americans can travel 1,000 miles in any direction and not find that even their knowledge of Spanish (or any other language other than English) is not particularly useful to them, other than in communicating with workmen they may employ.
I agree with him that in one sense, it’s not necessary to speak another language in the United States. That sense being a pure, practical one. But there are other benefits to learning a language. For one, as Obama suggested, it provides a competitive advantage for business. Americans may not travel much, but lots of folks from other countries travel to America. Even if those people speak English, there can be business advantages to being able to speak with them in their own language.
Additionally, from my multilingual friends I am assured that speaking other languages is helpful for trying to understand other cultures and ways of thinking–which is a good skill for any educated person to have. A broader understanding of ideas fosters creativity and innovation.
Frankly, all this seems to be is a pathetic attempt to feed the “Barack Obama is Unamerican” narrative. A narrative that, I might add, has the result of making Americans sound like ignorant hillbillies. “He’s got a funny name!” “He likes food that tastes good instead of crap that’s fried in lard!” “He likes foreigners!” “He wants to speak other languages!” “He’s educated!” “He played basketball instead of football!” Embarrassing, really.
There are lots of policy ideas that Barack Obama has that are pretty silly–his protectionist-leaning foreign trade policies, for one thing. His commitment to cutting taxes without commiserate spending cuts. His national service plan. His push to expand government funding for faith-based charities. His support for McCain-Feingold. His support for No Child Left Behind. There’s plenty to attack Obama on the merits. Why not stick to that?
UPDATE (James Joyner): While I agree with Alex about the silliness of this as an “outrage” and even agree that bilingualism has its uses, Obama has stumbled on one of my pet peeves with this one:
You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?
Europeans speak English because they live in geographically small countries and have regular occasion to speak other languages. English has become the default lingua franca because of the reach of the British Empire followed by the rise of the United States as a world power. If you live virtually anywhere in the world where English is not your first language, then your choice of a second language is rather obvious.
By contrast, Americans have no such easy choice. I learned to speak German because I spent quite a bit of time there growing up and again as a young adult because I grew up around and served in the United States Army, which meant I’d have plenty of occasion to use the language. Outside Germany, however, the ability to speak German has essentially no application and, indeed, my skills have atrophied substantially. French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Farsi and a host of other languages would be occasionally useful. But, aside from those who learn languages easily and make a hobby of it, it’s simply not worth the time and effort to do so if you’re an American who doesn’t regularly travel to a specific country.
The one exception is Spanish. But, unless you live in Texas, New Mexico, California, or Florida the only real reason to learn that language is, as Dave notes, to more easily converse with workmen. Whether it’s worth the time investment for that purpose is, I suppose, an individual judgment.
UPDATE II (James Joyner): Steve Bainbridge points out that Obama made his comments in the context of the need for those living in America to learn English, making his answer a neat sleight-of-hand.
