By Joe Rector
I’ve listened to several news reports about countries other than the U.S. lately. One thing in particular has caught my attention: so many other country leaders and their citizens speak English. The citizens sometimes make mistakes in word choice or verb tense; however, they speak well enough for others to understand what they want to convey. Maybe our educational system should begin a concerted effort to make the coming generations proficient in another language.
During my years in high school, students were required to take two years of a foreign language. I had the choice of Spanish, Latin or French. My older brother had taken French, so I decided to do the same. That first year was interesting. As a class, we listened to a recording and repeated words or phrases. Our teacher was patient with our East Tennessee accents as we tried to make our thick tongues produce vocabulary from the “language of love.” From that first year, I learned to say, “My name is Joe.” I also remembered a few other words, especially the curse words our instructor told us.
The second year, French kicked my bottom. Grammatical structure, reading and writing took center stage. I was lost. Of course, my success might have come with just a little studying, but when I looked at a page of French, I just didn’t have a clue. I knew all about English verbs and pronouns and their tenses and cases, but it never occurred to me that what Mrs. Tucker was teaching was the same thing, just in French.
My goal in college was to become a choir director. My advisor told me that since I’d taken two years of French in high school, I would need to take advanced French as part of my course of study. I’d struggled to make Ds in high school and knew that failure awaited me in those college classes. So, I changed my major to English, something I’ve never regretted.
In the ‘70s, the world was still a big place. That’s no longer true. We are able to visit places in just a few hours aboard a giant jet that logically shouldn’t be able to get off the ground. “Al Gore’s” creation of the Internet has brought people from across the world onto our laptop screens. The fact is that we Americans miss out on so much information because we speak only English, and most of us don’t do that proficiently.
If we are to remain the greatest country on this planet, we must become bilingual or better. Our goal should be to begin teaching Spanish in elementary school and continue that throughout high school. If schools begin language teaching in the early grades, young minds will easily pick up that second tongue.
No, I’m not advocating that we learn Spanish because of any crisis at the southern border. The fastest-growing segment of our population is Asian Americans, but most of that group speaks English already.
Too many Latin Americans speak little, if any, English. If we are going to continue our success as a major player, learning Spanish is a must. Our hemisphere is filled with Spanish-speaking countries, so the logical conclusion is that we should learn their language to communicate more effectively. If students begin at an early age, they will pick up a second language as easily as they do English.
My proposal for the American generation to become at least bilingual has nothing to do with politics. In fact, I would further propose that Spanish-speaking individuals who want to become American citizens should be tested in the fifth year that they come to the U.S. to make sure that they are proficient in English, and I would tie this demand to their citizenship acquisition.
Learning another language offers our children greater opportunities as they become members of the workforce. Others learning the English language are more likely to include American culture in their worlds. The whole thing is a win-win situation. We must refuse to let prejudice and fear keep our children and future generations falling behind other countries that realize the importance of speaking to others in their native languages. It’s as simple as that.
