About an hour ago, Maya Frost tweeted something utterly disturbing:
Not So Global: Share of US public elementary schools teaching foreign language classes drops by 40% in last decade http://tinyurl.com/ak4at9
From the linked article (via Public School Insights):
The share of U.S. public elementary schools teaching foreign language has fallen by almost 40% over the last decade. You know–the decade when 9/11, globalization, and growing diversity at home fueled calls for greater knowledge of other languages and cultures.
Education Week published these disheartening preliminary results of a new survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL). The full results will be available in autumn.
My fear is that is a part of a widening trend where the U.S. education system is failing to meet the needs of the workforce. If graduates from U.S. public institutions cannot function in a global, intercultural environment, what employment hopes do they have? A low level role at McDonald’s?
There’s some pretty big jumps toward the conclusion of this post. Less foriegn language will cause us to have a deluge of low level workers? Really? So, with an increase in foriegn language training we would eradicate low level jobs?
While the main point of the post is to point out that language education has decreased in elementary schools — elementary schools — it doesn’t follow that this will have any particular outcomes. What have elementary schools gotten better at? What has increased by 40%. Is it only bad? I don’t think so.