House Republicans appear to be on the verge of making a terrible mistake, both politically and in terms of education policy.
On May 25, the House Education and the Workforce Committee passed its first major package of reforms under new chairman John Kline (R., Minn.), eliminating more than 40 inefficient, duplicative federal education programs. “There are more than 80 programs under current elementary and secondary education law, and that’s just too complicated and too great a burden for our schools and local districts,” Kline declared when the bill passed out of committee. “It’s time to weed out the programs that aren’t working and focus on initiatives that lead to real success in the nation’s classrooms.”
Advertisement
To most fiscal conservatives, large swaths of this proposal will make perfect sense, such as eliminating programs that are on the books but that have never received funding through the appropriations process, programs that haven’t received funding in several years, or programs that amount to earmarks, such as the Special Education Teacher Training Program, which gives $100,000 to the University of Northern Colorado train special-education teachers.
In an era of the Internet in the classroom, dropping funding for Ready to Learn television seems long overdue. Considering how few Americans understand much of anything about economics, it’s a bit troubling to see funding eliminated for the Council on Economic Education, but perhaps none of the council’s work will ever have the reach and popular appeal of the Keynes vs. Hayek rap videos.
But in the list of programs on the chopping block, in the category of “programs that are duplicative or inappropriate for the federal government” is this:
Foreign Language Assistance Program: The Foreign Language Assistance program provides grants for foreign language instruction. The program received $19 million in FY 2009, $15.7 million in FY 2010, and $27 million in FY 2011. The Foreign Language Assistance program has too narrow a purpose, and the activities funded under the program can already be supported under the ESEA Title I (Aid for the Disadvantaged) program.
Eliminate all targeted federal funding for teaching kids foreign languages? Seriously?
First, despite the assertion from the legislation’s architect, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R., Calif.), the program’s activities can’t really just be shifted to Title I programs. Title I grantshave numerous conditions: Schools must have at least a 40 percent poverty rate, or the program must specifically target children who are failing or are at high risk of failing. In other words, no matter how well the program performs or how cost-effective a school’s foreign-language program was, it couldn’t get any direct federal funding unless the student body was sufficiently impoverished or unless the program changed to help only failing or near-failing students. Students who aren’t failing would be out of luck.
The program deems FLAP to have “too narrow a purpose.” But this isn’t basket-weaving.
Other federal grant money could theoretically still be used to fund foreign-language programs, but this is an area that deserves targeted aid — direct encouragement from the federal government. Look at this from the national-security perspective, if not a “hey, this vote could easily be demagogued and used as attack ad fodder by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” perspective.
The FBI has a critical shortage of qualified translators, leaving 31 percent of captured foreign-language e-mails and electronic communication un-translated and 25 percent of captured audio un-translated. They actually have fewer linguists than they did the last time the OIG looked at this, in 2005. It takes 19 months to hire a linguist and an additional seven months to hire a contract linguist to a permanent FBI employee.
The U.S. State Department has a serious shortage of personnel with key language skills; as of 2008, 31 percent of Foreign Service officers did not meet both the foreign languages speaking and reading proficiency requirements for their positions with the rate hitting near 40 percent the Near East and South and Central Asia. Fewer than a third of the Central Intelligence Agency’s analysts and overseas spies were proficient in a foreign language.The Government Accountability Office has found that the Department of Homeland Security knows that the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all need more multilingual employees, but still haven’t figured out how many. The Department of Defense – you get the idea.
Goethe famously said: "Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt weiss nichts von seiner eigenen." ('Those who do not know foreign languages know nothing of their own.') There was a time when educated Americans had at least a smattering of a foreign language, esp. Latin, and could analyze sentences with a knowledge of traditional grammar. Perhaps they also they knew, at least vaguely, who Goethe was...No more. Sarah Palin, I hear, couldn't give the dates of World War II...I don't suppose she knows any foreign language either - or who Goethe was...I'm a conservative.
Why doesn't know-nothingness (Bachman's another one) bother other conservatives?
Rorain and Jim. Why does "know nothingness" have to automatically lead to expensive (or inexpensive) federal programs? Why can't people decide that teaching foreign languages is a good idea and do it without a handout from the federal government, with all the attendant regulations that accompany such handouts? I say get rid of the federal program and let people teach their children as they see fit with the extra money they have in their pockets.
As an Irishman whose family (and ancestral land) have for the most part lost the Gaelic languae, as someone who took Latin and Greek in high school and college, and a as father of a son (another Aidan) who is and has been since the age of four, been in a dual language school, I agree with the general assumption that that learning the language (and the various constructs that go with learning a second (or third) language), I strongly disagree that this is a federal constitutionally permitted responsibility to ensure and fund, at a local school unit level, these programs. I would be in favor of well-spent money to train individuals specifically for State, Defense, CIA and FBI because their missions are generally appropriate constitutional federal prerogatives.
Each program that can be cut is a small pebble on a hopefully evergrowing mound of reduce spending (and hopefully reduced deficits).
Foreign language instruction is essential to a sound basic education.
Having said that, there is no provision in the Constitution for the federal government's involvement in education. Any federal funding of education is unconstitutional and the States should push back to protect themselves and their people in this area.
Mr. Geraghty's argument appears unprincipled and specious.
If federal funding of education is constitutional, Mr. Geraghty must say how. Saying that the founders were multilingual should not satisfy the Tea Partiers he would prefer to dismiss. Moreover, the founders did not study Latin and Greek in order to fill the ranks of the eighteenth century FBI.
Even if federal funding were constitutionally permissible and concern for national security could warrant it, Mr. Geraghty would have to do more than suggest that childhood foreign language education may populate government ranks at less cost than current programs that train adults. Neither are the "national fiscal benefits" any more obvious.
>Eliminate all targeted federal
>funding for teaching kids foreign
>languages? Seriously?
Well, yes, seriously. There's nothing absurd about this.
Yes, foreign language instruction is in general a good thing.
And no, the federal government shouldn't be funding it, especially when the federal government IS SO OUT OF MONEY AND IN DEBT THAT WE CAN'T EVEN PICTURE HOW BAD IT IS. Sheesh.
Look at it this way ... if we can't even trim *this*, just how are we *ever* going to get entitlements under control?
It is a shame that it takes the Federal Government to insist that early foreign language instruction is important, but that is where we are with our educational bureaucracy. During my last overseas assignment with my family, I took my children out of the international school and put them into the extremely underfunded local school, so they could have more foreign language experience. First grade, native language plus two foreign languages. A Third foreign language was introduced in Fifth Grade. American teachers assume kids can't learn foreign languages, while all over the world, kids are being taught foreign languages. As to the constitutionality, the point was well made that this has a national defense justification.....which I do maintain is a constitutional duty for our government
That Americans should do better vis-a-vis foreign languages is pretty much a given. That this is a federal responsibility isn't.
From another perspective, does it make sense to teach millions of kids a foreign language, so that the state dept and FBI can find a few dozen to few hundred additional translators?
From a third perspective, I suspect that the languages being taught under this program, are not the languages that the FBI and state dept need.
For example, how many people think that Farsi is one the languages this program is teaching to children?
If the state dept and FBI need people proficient in a language Rosetta Stone is less than $100 dollars a copy.
I will disagree slightly, MarkW. To get the full benefit of Rosetta Stone, you have to buy more than one level of it, adding up to more than $100 over time. (Actually been there, done that, with Rosetta Stone.)
The lack of foreign language experience in the US makes a lot of sense when you consider the circumstances of an average person in the US.
From almost any place in Europe, a two or three hour drive will land you in a place where a different language is spoken. In the US, for most of us, that's a two or three day drive.
How many of us took several years of language in school, and then never used it again after leaving school?
I'm disappointed, Jim. First there is this twisting of the argument:
"...the activities funded under the program can already be supported under the ESEA Title I (Aid for the Disadvantaged) program."
--becomes--
"Eliminate all targeted federal funding for teaching kids foreign languages"
Seriously?
Secondly, where did your constitutional federalism go? The feds have NO business in education. NONE. Not even funding it.
You sound like you're channeling Bush's "compassionate conservatism" on this one, Jim.
MarkW, Things have changed so much with the internet. Young people can now keep hearing and reading the foreign languages that my generation studied and forgot. They can access pop culture and sports reporting, cooking sites and news. And if they start young, they won't have the pronunciation problems most older learners have. They may not learn some of the less familiar languages in school, but they will learn that they can learn them. It will give them a skill that lets them bypass MSM reporting on other lands, and more and more people find it important to their careers.
Is Jim serious? The feds are the problem not the solution for foreign language funding. I'm second to none in my love for foreign languages (I have 3) and take every opportunity to promote such, but like W he fails to understand this is no role for the government at any level. Those who know history know when the government got involved, education ended & was replaced by stupid politics.
To the commenters objecting that public education itself is a sticky Constitutional wicket: your arguments are noted. However, so long as it exists, it's in everyone's interest--Republicans included--to make sure the public curriculum is adequate.
And Geraghty's right on the money here. Foreign languages are important not only for U.S. strategic interests, but for cultural and educational reasons. Scroll to the beginning and read Roran's Goethe quote. Re-read it. Monolingualism is a species of subliteracy, and an adequate educational system, public or private, will not countenance it.
@Jhimmibhob
To argue that "as long as it exists..." we should support an unconstitutional extension of federal authority rather than the effort to begin dismantling that unconstitutional federal activity seems to me rather circular.
I agree. It's important to learn other languages. It's also important to learn one's own. Given that too many school systems are failing to do the latter, giving them money for the former seems misplaced at present. In any event, neither is the business of the federal government.
In this interconnected global business environment it is inconceivable to avoid learning foreign languages for proper interaction. But, then, language learning has never been important in our country in recent time. President Eisenhower influenced me to become proficient in German, French, Russian, and Spanish languages and culture. Thus I became a simultaneous interpreter and translator. Even though this required academic credentials, it got me nowhere except E-4 rank during four years in the US Air Force. Afterwards, I converted to business because my language skills were almost useless. American firms gave overseas assignements as perks to mid and senior level executives for "being a good boy" within the company. By the way, I am also fluent in a Swiss German dialect. Nevertheless, at age 70 I began studying Mandarin Chinese strictly for my own pleasure. This will remain my focus in retirement. My fellow Americans need to concentrate on learning Chinese and Russian to help them grow and attain desirable business results. One can not expect the other persons to study your language and hope to achieve success in this interconnected world. That would be arrogant.
Wow, Geraghty! You bailed on your principles mighty quickly, dude!
Of course, there is that part of the Constitution that calls for federal funding of education...oh.
But there's that part where the Constitution says if you fund a child's learning of foreign languages then they must work for...oh.
But...but...regulating interstate commerce is to mandating the purchase of healthcare as funding education is to...uh oh.
I can't help but wonder how it is that the Founding Dads mentioned in this article were able to learn all those languages without a federal government to create a Department of Education and to fund the teaching of foreign languages with taxpayer dollars. I don't understand how I was taught French, my sister German and my brother Spanish in K-12 before there was a Department of Education. How did they do that? Oh. Right. California had money for teaching those languages then, back before the funding was gobbled up by ESL programs and teacher retirements.
You're way off base on this one, James. Folks have got to get over the idea that the federal government should fund ANYTHING that is not Constitutionally-enumerated. Period. I stood up and cheered when I heard talk of Republicans in Congress wanting every bill to contain a citation of the part of the Constitution that authorizes it. What happened to that?
If there is a national or even a private need for folks to learn foreign languages, they will do so. Our government was able to utilize our melting pot population to staff its needs for foreign language speakers long before the creation of federally funded school programs. But that was when one actually needed to have skills to work in government. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Follow
