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Language Learning for ShrubsJanuary 06, 2006 Interesting story in the online Washington Post this morning: President Bush wants to encourage foreign-language learning in the U.S. of A., as a way to beef up national security. (Beef get fat on corn; how about panaceas?) He wants to fund cradle-to-grave -- well, OK, that's an exaggeration: make that "kindergarten-to-graduate-school" -- programs. The languages he especially wants to encourage are Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi. I confess: my knee jerked mightily and snide remarks poured from my mouth, even though there was no one to hear them but Rhodry the Snoozing Malamutt. Such as -- • "Language learning is good; why doesn't Mr. Bush put some time and money into improving his own grasp of spoken English and his English comprehension?" • "Aha, so this is what it takes to put a spike in the English-only movement!" • "Why don't the Americans teach their children how to think?" (A shameless ripoff of Professor 'enry 'iggins.) Because it would present a dire threat to "national security" -- well, not national security exactly, but surely the employment security of Mr. Bush and the our-profits-über-alles crowd. Imagine a U.S. citizenry that knew from the get-go why "intelligent design" has no place in a school curriculum and why what's good for Wal-Mart isn't necessarily good for the rest of us. Imagine Fox News being used in classrooms across the nation, to teach students how to recognize and respond to propaganda. The middle-school curriculum would include parsing military recruitment brochures, and in high school the kids could take on the New York Times. Fantasy can be hazardous to your health: the crust of my cynicism is threatening to crack up, and I've got these weird pains in part of my belly where the big laughs start. Way back when, I was an Arabic major at Georgetown University. It was no secret that the Arabic department got Defense Department money. A couple of my professors, along with colleagues from the Russian, Chinese, and Spanish departments, had offices in that mysterious building across the street -- the one that also housed the offices of what was then called the International Police Academy. Part of my college education -- the part that didn't take place in the classroom or the language lab -- including learning what all these connections meant and why they were important. I don't regret that I dropped Arabic in favor of an intensive commitment to written English, but from time to time I do speculate: What if I'd become fluent in Arabic and an expert in the Arab world, and what if I'd come to the attention of some high-level goon in one of the Bush administrations, and what if I'd just said no to flacking for the U.S. government? Maybe I would have had 15 minutes in a bully pulpit. Maybe I would have been disappeared to Guantanamo or some other place, or just hounded and persecuted the way the U.S. government (and a troublingly large portion of the citizenry) likes to do to anyone who knows more than it does and says so out loud.
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