Address by United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, Language Study and World Affairs

LANGUAGE STUDY AND WORLD AFFAIRS * by Earl J. McGrath U. S. Commissioner of Education Federal Security Agency In a recent international meeting on education the delegate from Egypt rose and addressed the audience in faultless English. The next day with equal fluency and precision he used French, the other official conference language. In private conversation with the representative from Western Germany he spoke the latter's language. And, of course, he was master of Arabic, his own tongue. Though the educators from some forty other nations were linguistically less versatile than he, most of them could use at least one tongue in addition to their own with ease and exactness. At this conference the United States was represented by five persons all of whom had no less than 19 years of formal schooling, and all of whom held the Ph. D. degree. Yet no one of them could use another language well enough to carry on even a private conversation fluently, to say nothing of addressing the conference formally from the floor. This is not an unusual situation. Americans who travel in other lands are quickly impressed with the ability of other nationals to understand and to speak several languages. They are also keenly aware of and often embarrassed by their own inadequacies in this respect. But many Americans faced with these facts, and unhappily even some who have had considerable schooling ask, "What difference does it make?" Another common response is, "If it is necessary for non-English speaking people to communicate with us, let ' em learn English." More chauvinistic persons even say, "If we are the most powerful Nation on earth, and destined for world leadership, then certainly English ought to become the common language of mankind--so why should we learn other languages?" A response once more reasonable, but one now based on a false premise is, "Well the Dutch, the French, and other Europeans need to learn languages because they live so near other countries with which they have close commercial, diplomatic, and social relations. Likewise .the Egyptians and other Middle Easterners are at cultural and commercial crossroads of the world where the knowledge of several languages is indispensable. But,' so the argument runs, "with the exception of the few Americans whose positions in business or Government take them to other lands our citizens can get along with English. And even though this small group, and a few others whose professional activities require that they read foreign languages, would profit from language instruction the American school system surely cannot be organized around their limited needs." The most charitable off-hand rejoinder one can make to such quick generalizations is that they stem from ignorance of the world position and * Delivered at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Central States Modern Language Teachers Association at the General Session, May 3, 1952, Ballroom, Statler Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri, 9:15 a.m., CDT. Printed in part in the Bulletin of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, Vol. IX, No. 4, June 15, 1952. Published in The Maryland Teacher, Vol. x, No. 4, December 1952, pp. 12-14; The Maine Teacher, Vol. 13, No. 1, October 1952, pp. 23-25; Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XVIII, No. 24, Oct. 1, 1952, pp. 764-769. of American Colleges Bulletin, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, Oct. 1952, pp. 389-398; PNY Delsa Lappan, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, Jan. 1953, pp. 144-149; The Oklahoma Teacher, Vol. 34, No. 3, Nov. 1952, pp. 16-18, 48. Published in part in The American-German Review, published by Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, Inc., 420 Chestnut St., Philadelphia 6, Penn., Vol. XIX, No. 1, Oct. 1952, pp. 3,35; The American Observer, Vol. XXIL, No. 18, Jan. 1953.