Monolingual country America is the past?
It is no exaggeration to say that the United States of America might be the only country world where one can graduate from high school and even college without taking a course of study of foreign languages. Of the few schools that still require their students to learn a foreign language for graduation, one or two years of foreign language study is completely inadequate for the development of a high degree of spoken fluency. While the United States crossed in the 21st century, a bilingual rate of less than 9% prevailed. That rate is still true in 2005.
Back in 1979, a Presidential Commission Foreign Languages revealed that,
"American incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous …"
Some 26 years later, that "scandal" is all the rage in America.
Second Language Acquisition in the public education system has always suffered from the prevailing political and ideological education of the time. During the first 100 years of American history, America was a society Multilingual, a fact too hard to believe in the light of today's bilingual deficit. Although xenophobic tendencies always hides in a place ready to jump to Bush There was no legislative efforts to control the teaching and practice of teaching foreign languages.
In the infancy of our country, immigrants and their descendants managed to maintain their native language while learning English. The Americans and English as language tutors hired to learn a language abroad. Many Americans could make this effort today, but no. To develop proficiency in a foreign language was first seen by our fellow Americans as a valuable skill and indicative of an educated person. Unfortunately, this is not true in modern times.
In 1800, due to the influx of immigrants in the United States, the private foreign language study began to be replaced by public schools to meet the needs of the collective immigrants.
In early 1900, there was a great effort to establish foreign language teaching at all levels of public education and establish rules governing these programs. This effort, something surprising and exceptional considering modern "English Only" movements in the United States, which unfortunately is shorted.
In the early 20, a high level of xenophobia that exists in the United States. World War I was primarily responsible the proscription of speech in any language other than English. Newspapers in foreign languages and foreign language programs in public schools were abolished.
Nationalism, a new kind of populism to emerge for the sake of national unity. Foreign language instruction was irrationally as a threat to national unity – A condition not unlike what we're seeing in 2006 in the English Only movement.
By 1923, twenty U.S. states had laws prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages. The Supreme Court overturned this nonsense in 1923. However, in 1954, 56% of U.S. high schools not even have language courses available to students. Of those that did, only 14.2% of students enrolled in the study of foreign languages. This was abnormal fear of the United States (xenophobia) of the strange or foreign as applied to foreign languages. By World War II, America was unprepared linguistically to conduct the war. U.S. Military had to catch up with the rest of the world through the development of effective language learning overnight.
In the early 1970's, a slight improvement in the supply of public school foreign language programs, once again falling. This was probably due to reduced funding for programs. A second language illiterate parents and principals are ill-informed decisions to reduce thinking of funding for foreign language learning will not benefit students.
Elementary school programs for foreign language acquisition disappeared. Foreign language entrance requirements were abolished in some universities.
When in early 1980 conducted a small resurgence in the second language learning occurred, but progress was limited. Although there are many studies and reports about why the U.S. needed to be proficient in languages foreign, only a small number of states had programs in elementary grades. Most of them were spearheaded locally.
All Today modern improvements are constantly in danger of elimination by neo-populist nationalists, groups of English-only. They are Mexican immigrants as brutal education of their children English public schools with their native Spanish.
In a 2002 article by Patrik Jonsson, published in The Christian Science Monitor reported that the states of Georgia, New Jersey, and the school district in Denver, Colorado, had already resigned or were in the process of removing the requirement foreign language to graduate from high school.
I contacted all of these school districts. Only Denver responded. The representative said,
"I checked with several counselors. At this point, we can not think of any Colorado district that requires a foreign language (particularly in the metropolitan area). That does not say that there is a small district somewhere that requires it. "
PART TWO – Solving the problem
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