Language learning is key in supporting the idea that we should value all humans equally. This means it is a key component in maintaining a healthy democracy.
There has been a growing movement to reduce or eliminate university language programs. Several years ago, West Virginia University eliminated its language degrees, and the number of programs in languages like Chinese and Arabic has declined dramatically over the past decade. Cardiff University in the UK has decided to eliminate its language programs due to funding deficits this year. Clark University in the U.S. has indicated a plan to curtail language teaching for budgetary reasons.
These decisions show a marked lack of vision and understanding on the part of university administrators not only about the needs of humanities and social sciences programs but also about the purpose of education in a democratic society.
As I have thought about why languages seem to be an easy target, I keep coming up with two possible explanations:
- Many university administrators are from fields where understanding other languages is unnecessary, particularly STEM. Thus, they are ignorant that the best way to learn about another culture is from the inside, and studying the language is the best place to start doing that. Languages work in significantly different ways, and those differences reflect tendencies in thought and variations in how people interpret and perceive the world around them. Language translation is not just an equation to be solved; languages shape how we fundamentally see and experience the world.
- Many university administrators are ethnocentric and fail to recognize the fact that people in other societies do not necessarily want to do everything in English, even if that has become the norm internationally. Awareness of and ability to use different languages promotes global business and international understanding, partly because it shows sensitivity to the values and perspectives of others. One of the primary purposes of learning other languages is that it broadens our knowledge of those who may not interpret and think about the world the way we do and displays our respect for their viewpoints.
Both explanations likely influence decision-making focused on eliminating language programs. Both are evidence of administrators’ ignorance of the value of learning other languages.
They are also further evidence of how values associated with neoliberalism—money and economic efficiency—are supplanting all other value structures in higher education. These neoliberal values fail to recognize that educational institutions are not simply about generating workers and increasing salaries, in a democratic society they are about producing citizens who can think critically and understand and respect the perspectives of others who may have different ways of seeing the world.
Understanding a language is essential because learning a new language can change how one sees the world and undermine the sense of normalcy and universality that people usually associate with their native language and culture. In other words, learning different languages challenges us to consider and respect the humanity of others carefully—it is a central component in supporting a democratic society, which is grounded in the value that despite many differences, all human beings are fundamentally of equal value and should be treated that way.
It is challenging to accomplish respect for the humanity of others if one has little or no awareness of how others think, and language learning is the best path to begin gaining that awareness.
As I have thought about this problem, I’ve also come to wonder if higher education administrators, who appear to be neoliberal technocrats, believe that AI programs will make foreign language learning unnecessary. Perhaps, to them, translation and interpretation of other languages is just a technical issue; there is little or no awareness that people who speak different languages also think in various ways. As a result of this ignorance, higher education administrators are concluding that language programs are costly and unnecessary. AI can do it, so why teach it?
This might seem logical, but it isn’t because learning another language changes how we think about others. It is fundamental to ensuring people value and respect different viewpoints in a democracy. If, as educator James L. Mursell wrote seventy years ago, “the schools of a democratic society do not exist for and work for the support and extension of democracy,” then those schools are likely to become both socially useless and socially dangerous.[1]
Indeed, eliminating language programs is a fine recipe for making higher education both socially useless and dangerous. Why? It eliminates a key component in reducing ethnocentrism and increasing people’s abilities to recognize and respect different views of the world. In short, language learning is key in supporting the idea that we should value all humans equally. This means it is a key component in maintaining a healthy democracy.
As higher education administrators rush to cut programs to save money, they need to start thinking about the purpose of education in a democratic society. Is it about jobs? That’s a piece of the puzzle. However, the essential purpose of education is to produce adults who are not indifferent to their obligations as citizens and who recognize the importance of understanding and respecting the diversity of ideas and values.
Suppose we fail to do this, as Mursell notes. In that case, we will “educate people to be enemies of democracy—people who fall prey to demagogs, and who back movements and rally round leaders hostile to the democratic way of life.”
In short, eliminating programs like teaching foreign languages that sensitize people to the diversity of worldviews and the universal value of human life is subversive to democracy.
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[1] James L. Mursell, Principles of Democratic Education, WW. Norton & Co., New York, 1955, p. 3.
Cover photo, language immersion program at the City University of New York
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