Americans are notorious for not only being unable to speak multiple languages, unlike the rest of the world, but also not wanting to. Native born Americans make the United States a largely monolingual country and English is a growing language that you can find on every continent. There is no shortage of foreign languages spoken in the US, in fact, there are 54 languages spoken at McCaskey alone. However, how can this nation pride itself on being a “cultural melting pot,” when its homogenous “American” culture consistently opposes change? The pushback of foreign influence in America manifests itself in politicians’ nativist rhetoric such as that used by ex-president Donald Trump. Due to American exceptionalist attitudes or flaws in the US education system, Americans are far behind in learning foreign languages compared to the rest of the world. 

America is a global leader on the business front as a capitalist nation. This makes the ability to comprehend and communicate in foreign languages essential for a globalized world. Despite this, there are not many native born “polyglots,” or people who speak more than three languages. The statistics aren’t better for bilingual or trilingual citizens, which rest at 21.6% and 5%, respectively. Are Americans bad at learning languages, or do they not want to try?

Learning languages starts with an attitude. If the attitude while learning a foreign language at school is less than enthusiastic, students may not understand the importance. The educational system in America is framed to enable fluency at the end of language acquisition courses, but this is rarely the case, even with the spanish language immersion programs previously offered at the School District of Lancaster. 

The School District of Lancaster phased out the Spanish language immersion program in 2021 on the basis that it did not “equitably, economically or effectively serve the district’s 11,000 students,” according to school board member David Parry. The program was popularly received by its students. Taina Johnson, a McCaskey student who went through the Spanish Immersion program at Wharton Elementary comments, “Learning the basics at such a young age helped [familiarize] concepts quickly and learning the language came very naturally.” Johnson also had the benefit of speaking Spanish at home with her family which “helped [her] … to immediately learn Spanish alongside learning english.” There is no doubt that living with foreign language speakers will help one on the path to fluency, but this program helped those completely unfamiliar with Spanish such as McCaskey student Logan McIntyre, another past Spanish immersion student. He observes, “…I became very fluent [in Spanish] with it being the primary focus in my education.” McIntyre also recollects how when state testing began in third grade, Spanish became another background subject as they “barely focused [on it] at all.”

While there were multiple valid points for and against the freezing of this program, it does produce a significant question: Why do schools struggle to teach foreign languages? McCaskey French teacher Mrs. Browning reasoned, “Nobody is going to obtain fluency until you are immersed in that language,” adding, “language acquisition needs to start young.” American foreign language education isn’t effective, but how does it look on the world stage?

Compared with 66% of all European adults who know more than one language, the statistic of Americans who know more than one language is only at 21.6%. This inability to learn other languages has been deemed a “foreign language emergency,” by some, worried it will significantly impact American education on the international competitive stage. Part of the gap may be due to the fact that there is no national mandate for U.S citizens to study foreign languages, unlike almost two dozen European countries. In addition to this, language learning in higher education is declining with a 9% decrease in the number of American students enrolled in a foreign language class from 2006 to 2016. This means that fewer foreign language teachers will graduate college, contributing to the already low pool of teachers to teach “dying” subjects. Similarly to the decline of funding for the arts and even sports, the debate over what subjects are truly important to teach often means budget cuts for others. Multilingualism is found to be positively correlated with intelligence and memory, along with an increase in job opportunities. So, why do people underestimate its value?

Education, like most institutions in America, is dominated by the politics of those in power, most of whom haven’t taught at all. The debate over foreign language learning as a worthwhile investment is riddled with conflicts over budgeting, culture wars, and the growing teacher shortage. Americans have the highest chance of learning a language in an educational setting , 56% to be exact. Students tend to study the language in high school and disregard it immediately when they graduate. In fact, at McCaskey, you only need 2 foreign language credits to graduate compared to other subjects like math or science which require 4. Foreign language learning is not promoted as a  skill worthwhile enough for people to commit to the process, ultimately causing America to lag behind on the global scale. 

Americans may be bad at learning other languages because it is taught too late. The average age where a language is learned is 17 years old, far past the age where the brain easily soaks up information. 

A study found that over 30% of Americans who studied a foreign language only did so because it was a school requirement. Less than 10% studied a language to proficiency, in school or otherwise. 70% of Americans regret not learning a second language and 90% believe it is important. Less than 10% of third generation Americans are able to communicate in their heritage language, myself included. Clearly America does have the desire to learn another language, so why aren’t we doing it?

One could argue that Americans do not care about foreign countries as a result of the xenophobia that runs rampant in our culture, driven by nativist politicians who publicly tell immigrants to “go back to their country.” If society doesn’t think it’s important, the individual will be influenced by the general consensus. American’s belief in their own global superiority prohibits them from feeling the need to learn other languages, holding us back from being competitors on the world stage. Foreign language learning can and should be emphasized in the American education system. In order to increase multilingualism, we should take examples of other nations with high foreign language fluency such as Singapore. An increase of funding would account for stronger language learning programs in schools which may also help change the attitudes of Americans when it comes to other cultures. It’s not easy to learn a new language, but if we start young, a new generation of Americans may have a chance to be bilingual, setting a new standard for language proficiency in America.