View Content #8392
| Contentid | 8392 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Editorial: Finding Our Way with Words |
| Body | From http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0810/worldlanguages.html Finding Our Way with Words Adapting to the global age means having a voice in it. Can America's schools break the language barrier? By Amanda Litvinov October 2008 What does it say about America that we are the only industrialized nation that routinely graduates high school students who speak only one language? Frankly, it says that if you want to talk to us—to do business with us, negotiate peace with us, learn from or teach us, or even just pal around with us—you'd better speak English. The fact that we're woefully behind in world language skills has long registered somewhere between, "Hmmm," and "Yeah, so?" on the national priority gauge. (Compare that to our panicky responses to indicators that we're not on top in math and science.) But the English-only-is-OK attitude may be on the way out. A series of wake-up calls relating to national security, diplomacy, and economics—for example, the scramble to find Arabic translators after 9/11 and the struggle federal agencies faced aiding the Gulf Coast's sizable Vietnamese community post-Katrina—elicited voices of concern from the business community, the Department of Defense, educators, and families, all dismayed by our collective ignorance of world languages and cultures. Read the entire article at http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0810/worldlanguages.html . |
| Source | NEA Today |
| Inputdate | 2008-10-05 02:13:18 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2008-10-05 02:13:18 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | 2008-10-06 00:00:00 |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
