Shaping Language Policy in the USA

Scott Wible, a professor of English, has written a well-researched narrative on how US schools became tolerant of non-Anglophone speakers. I was not expecting any surprises, because I knew that no language other than English had ever been accepted in our public schools, at least not before the Civil Rights movement. If you came to school in the Southwest knowing only Spanish, or you were a Cajun in Louisiana who spoke Creole French, well too bad. It was “speak English or go home,” no accommodations were made. But at what point did this change? That is what Professor Wible tries to formulate.

The author goes back to the early 1970’s, when CUNY changed its entrance requirements to having only a high school diploma. Gone were the entrance exams and essays; all you needed now was to have graduated from high school. This led to a large number of freshman who could barely write. Now, instead of having scholars who were all ready to prove themselves, you have students who didn’t have a clue. Though not mentioned in the book, this was typical of New York City by the late 1960’s; industries were shutting down and with few job prospects, more working class Black youth opted for college. The problem was that students from working-class backgrounds hadn’t been prepared for college. They were prepared for more repetitive skill-based work-stenography and typing for girls, industrial trades for boys. They were not ready to read St. Thomas Aquinas! It’s a problem to this very day.

There’s a chapter in this book on how President Bush and the Defense Department wanted Arabic-speaking employees. An Israeli diplomat warned Bush that “you can’t win a war in Afghanistan unless you know the local language,” but who in the USA understands Pashtun and Urdu? Of the few Americans who speak it, how many want to join the army? Do you think an educated Pakistani-American with a good career will give it up for a US Marine salary? Not likely! Furthermore, despite Bush’s NCLB act, there’s been no increase in foreign language fluency. The average American kid only knows English, and he might not even know it well enough to go to college.

Perhaps the main problem is the lack of resources for educators here in the USA. Day care and preschool are notoriously lacking when compared to Europe, and that is where the children begin their education. The average six year old comes to 1^st Grade with no social skills or language skills, so teaching them to read is a double job.