Article by United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, Foreign Languages and World Affairs
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OCR Page 1 of 8FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND WORLD AFFAIRS *
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.
The educators from some 40 other nations were linguistically less
versatile than he. But 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 Each of them held the PhD degree and had received at least 19
years of formal schooling. Yet not 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 are often embarrassed
by their inadequacies in this respect.
Basic Reason for Language Study
The social, political, and international reasons for the study of
languages deserve the thoughtful consideration of all who determine the
character of American education. There are, of course, many arguments
for the study of languages. But today the basic consideration is our
world position as a nation.
* By Earl J. McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security
Agency, Washington, D. C., published in NEA Journal, October 1952, pp. 409-411.
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